[ls20]

I got my zen last night and was thrilled with the product. the songs
on it sounded awesome (with koss ksc-35 headphones), and the
navigation was good--unlike the ipod people would lead you to
believe.

i popped in my new IOGear USB 2 card, and it installed fine. However,
getting it to transfer files to the Zen and back was another story.
I used Playcenter, sent my 20gbs of music onto the PC Playlist, and set it
to Sync. Either it would transfer a few songs, say "Player is not connected or busy", or just stall. Ofcourse,
closing the program, and retrying wouldn't work. I even closed all
the creative stuff in the windows processes (through task manager)... but only
a reboot of the system and reboot of the zen would allow it to work again.

However, it would exhibit the same problem again after the reboot. I tried using the Creative Filemanager second, as I prefer simplified programs anyways.
Sometimes it would transfer, sometimes it wouldnt... just like with the Playcenter with the only
difference being--ofcourse--a different error message. So Creative software is buggy...nothing new, right? Well, I tried
Redchair's latest Notmad Explorer 7.11. Nope. that didn't work either.

Maybe its my computer. SO I took the nomad over to a new Compaq 2100 Laptop...long story short: no dice.

Day2. Giving it another go on my PC. low-level format my computer.
put in XP Pro, SP1, all windows updates, via 4-1 drivers, ati radeon
driver, directx 9. thats all... bare minimum software on my computer.
installed all the creative stuff and still couldnt solve my problem.

i ran through ALL the hoops: flashed the nomad zen. updated the zen
driver. put the USB2 card through all 5 of my PCI ports. tried it
with the existing USB1.1 ports that I have... tried it with the USB
port on my MS Natural keyboard... i mean I did everything.

I now have 1 faulty Nomad Zen and 5 extra gray hairs. Im going on vacation in 3 days, so Im exchanging the zen for an ipod
temporarily. If I end up liking it, I'll probably keep it, forgoing
giving the new ZEN NX a chance.

 

[williamgoody]

Don't know what to tell you man. I had the same problrms with the new Ipods when I had them, except for the last one I had.

Try exchanging it for another zen.

 

[austonia]

sorry to hear. I've had both a Nomad Zen and Nomad Jukebox 3 (both Firewire) and never had much of a problem. Even though Playcenter isn't the most streamlined software, seems to work loading of files onto the players and then adjusting ID3 tags if need be.

 

[GSTom1]

It's not the Zen or your computer that's faulity. It sounds like it's your mp3 files. For some reason, there are certain mp3 files that PlayCenter doesn't like and will crash. I usually rencode those files and reupload them and it's fine. I've had a Zen for a little over a month and have loaded about 175 albums on it.

I know it's ludicrous to shell out another $25 for better software, but I've heard lots of good things about Notmad Explorer and how stable compared to PlayCenter.

Perhaps investing in this software will solve your probems?

 

[blessingx]

Never tried the Zen (no Mac support). Had the original NJB on Win2K,XP,OS9 boxes. Had many of the same problems. Part of the reason I switched to the iPod (but then again I find the iPod navigations miles ahead of the NJB).

If Notmad didn't work, it's obviously something bigger than bad Creative drivers.

 

[ls20]

Quote:

Originally posted by blessingx Never tried the Zen (no Mac support). Had the original NJB on Win2K,XP,OS9 boxes. Had many of the same problems. Part of the reason I switched to the iPod (but then again I find the iPod navigations miles ahead of the NJB). If Notmad didn't work, it's obviously something bigger than bad Creative drivers.

glad to see i'm not alone. also, ive read about similar problems on the creative newsgroup so it's not an isolated case... yet its not addressed anywhere in the FAQ (on creativelabs or nomadworld.com

)

the creative software wasn't that bad (like Austonia said)... and I found the file manager to be similar in look and feel to Notmad Exp

 

[Hirsch]

Hmmm...I've got a Zen USB2.0, and it's been working for me without a problem in the world. I do prefer Notmad to Creative Playcenter, but even Playcenter didn't really give me any serious issues to deal with. So, it's not a universal problem, I suspect.

What Playcenter, and for that matter Notmad will NOT do is to transfer mp3 files with faulty tags. If you go to nomadness.com, there are recommendations there for mp3 utlities that can help you edit the tags. Once those are complete, the files should transfer easily.

Player not connected may be just that. There's a separate utility that detects the presence of the player. I think it's called PDE detector. If it's not running, Playcenter will not be able to connect to your jukebox.

 

[strohmie]

I'll echo Hirsch's sentiments with the same version of this product...maybe the Zen that shipped to Maryland just work better.

But honestly, I am currently running a Windows XP computer with USB2.0 and have no problems. *However* I had major troubles getting the Zen recognized through a USB port on my old Windows 98 machine. Usually I would either have to turn on the player at the exact right time, or restart, or do some other magical dance to get it to work. Once I built my XP machine, I had no problems.

So that's my experience. Good luck to you, it's a fantastic player.

 

[deejayshakur]

grr, having some of the same probs... i too am using an IOGEAR card... asus a7v motherboard (kt133)... i'll set it to import a few albums, and it will barely get through two before crashing. the hdd inside the zen is still spinning...

so what the final verdict? any fixes? maybe its my id3 tags...but i am very meticulous about mine, so they should be updated. any suggestions welcome.

 

[austonia]

Quote:

Originally posted by Hirsch What Playcenter, and for that matter Notmad will NOT do is to transfer mp3 files with faulty tags. If you go to nomadness.com, there are recommendations there for mp3 utlities that can help you edit the tags. Once those are complete, the files should transfer easily.

Let me emphasize this as being accurate. I have had problems with trasfers, causing program crashes, that were definately linked to MP3's with corrupt tags. When I found the bad MP3's, removed them, and repeated the same trasfer several times there were no problems.

The MP3's that had problems had file names that were too long for windows XP to handle. This is part of what corrpted the ID3 data. when I right-clicked on these files, I didn't get the same options that I would get with any other files.

If the bad files aren't obvious you can try transferring music in batches until you find the ones that are causing the problem.

Also, if I remember right, Playcenter uses V1 tags, not V2, so if you have MP3's with ONLY V2 tags they show up as "unknown" in the player's database.

 

[deejayshakur]

observation of the night:

files that won't transfer with usb2.0 work perfectly fine when i switch to usb1.1.... what do you guys make of that?

i wanna say that the zen hdd can't handle the bandwidth that the usb2.0 is pushing so it just craps out and hangs... just a thought.

 

[Watchdog]

I used to own a Nomad IIc and I found Playcenter to be one of the worst programs I've ever used. Luckily I had a flash reader and was able to work around the problem.

 

[strohmie]

I use USB2.0 and there has been no problem. Haven't the slightest idea why files would work with 1.1 and not 2.0 - Zen HDs are normal notebook HDs, and last I checked USB2.0 was available for notebooks.

Have you tried Notmad? I've always considered the extra $25 for that software trivial considering you save about $150 by going with the Zen over the iPod. ^_^

 

[deejayshakur]

ok...so i thought it was my overclocked pci bus, but apparently its not either. but sometimes, when i use my hand and hold the usb2.0 plug into the zen, the transfer will be successful... sigh

 

[noguilt]

can you try a different cable?