Sweatin' Bullets
I decided to see if there was an upgrade to the firmware for my Creative Nomad Zen Xtra MP3 player this morning, and lo and behold there was! Three years old, but it was there, and I'd never upgraded the firmware, so I decided to do it. I downloaded the executable, plugged in my Zen, and started it running. It complained that some program was interfering, and to please close all explorer windows and applications. First, I closed my browsers. Nope, not them! So I closed everything else I had open. Still telling me something was interfering. So next I went into Windows Task Manager and started shutting down background-running procedures until finally I got frustrated and just closed everything that could be terminated, and tried it again. Finally! I clicked upgrade, and it announced that the player may reboot a few times during the procedure, and that it would take a few minutes. Sure enough, a few seconds later the player rebooted, only to display the following message: "firmware problem" followed by a menu titled "rescue mode" which consisted of four options: "clean", "format all", "reload os", and "reboot". I thought this was part of the process, so I waited. Nothing happened. I waited longer, but that status bar just wasn't moving on my desktop, so I tried "clean". It stated that the player was being cleaned.... 100%! Still nothing. The install had said I'd lose all my data anyway, so I chose "format all"... it formated, then told me the amount of space on the unit. Still no firmware upgrade though, and the rescue mode menu remained on my screen. Well, I'm trying to install a new os anyway, so let's try "reload os". This announced that the os was being removed, and that it would then need to be reloaded via usb. Oh thanks for telling me that after! I waited, still nothing, so I closed the install and restarted it. Now the firmware install told me the player wasn't connected. GAH! I rebooted, but it still wasn't detecting it.
I was pretty pissed off now, so I went into the control panel > add/remove programs, and started uninstalling all the creative drivers and applications that had been installed over the months. I then went into the device manager and uninstalled the Zen device from the list, prompting the computer to realize there was an unrecognized device attached via usb, and search for drivers for it. All this, and the damned firmware updater still wasn't recognizing the device as being attached to the computer. So, really anxious and determined, I started researching online. It turns out, this is not an uncommon issue people have had with upgrading the firmware on the Zen Xtra. And the culprit causing all the trouble? Windows Media Player 11. *boggle*
Apparently, you have to rollback your version of media player from 11, then rollback the media player format 11 runtime (whatever the fuck that is), then uninstall the Microsoft User-Mode Driver Framework Feature Pack 1.0.0 (whatever the fuck THAT is). I did this and LO AND BEHOLD! The device was recognized, and the firmware quickly installed onto it. And I have to say, it's a huge change for the player, and I love it. It's now got a tabbed GUI interface as opposed to just a list of words. AND-- AND! I can now drag and drop music directly onto the player, instead of having to run an application and drag and drop music files into that. I'm so very happy to be able to just drop music into the device now. Happy happy joy joy! I don't even mind that it erased all my songs and playlists. Those will be easy to reupload to the player (in fact, I'm doing it right now).
I was pretty pissed off now, so I went into the control panel > add/remove programs, and started uninstalling all the creative drivers and applications that had been installed over the months. I then went into the device manager and uninstalled the Zen device from the list, prompting the computer to realize there was an unrecognized device attached via usb, and search for drivers for it. All this, and the damned firmware updater still wasn't recognizing the device as being attached to the computer. So, really anxious and determined, I started researching online. It turns out, this is not an uncommon issue people have had with upgrading the firmware on the Zen Xtra. And the culprit causing all the trouble? Windows Media Player 11. *boggle*
Apparently, you have to rollback your version of media player from 11, then rollback the media player format 11 runtime (whatever the fuck that is), then uninstall the Microsoft User-Mode Driver Framework Feature Pack 1.0.0 (whatever the fuck THAT is). I did this and LO AND BEHOLD! The device was recognized, and the firmware quickly installed onto it. And I have to say, it's a huge change for the player, and I love it. It's now got a tabbed GUI interface as opposed to just a list of words. AND-- AND! I can now drag and drop music directly onto the player, instead of having to run an application and drag and drop music files into that. I'm so very happy to be able to just drop music into the device now. Happy happy joy joy! I don't even mind that it erased all my songs and playlists. Those will be easy to reupload to the player (in fact, I'm doing it right now).