A curious thing happens in Vista 64 bit (Home premium), and I wonder if anyone can suggest the cause or let me know if they have experienced a similar problem:
For several years the Vista system has had no problem recognizing and mounting my Zen mp3 player. Then, out of the blue it suddenly refused to recognise it. If I create a partition in the Zen it recognises that (so it will then go on to replenish the battery of the machine) but it persists in not recognising the media player itself and therefore I could not add new tracks (well, only to its little storage partition, which makes it no more than a glorified memory stick).
Again out of the blue (after a massive repair on Vista involving TrustedInstaller etc) the media player was recognised once more, although I wasn't actually expecting it to. Now, again out of the blue a couple of weeks ago, possibly after a "clean up", it again refuses to recognise it. I mentioned this to Creative, but after a failed software repair all they could suggest was that I should buy a new mp3 player... not necessary, it works fine!, it simply has recognition issues in Vista

Is there a specific dll file I should be looking for?

(I should mention that my laptop which runs XP has no such difficulties with the player, so it's not actually vital for me to see it in Vista, it would just be "quite nice" :-)).
I should also mention that I deleted many of my system restore points on Vista to enable a proper defrag, so going back to a restore point is not an option here.
Thanks for any ideas.
Kind regards
David

As a basic start for you I would do an SFC Scannow scan on both Windows XP and Vista, to make sure you have no missing or corrupted files. Please ignore the advertisements offered within the links given.

Others will come by with more assistance I am sure.

kind regards,

Hi Tallin
Thanks for that link. It appears that scannow dealt with a large number of problems that I never knew I had, so I imagine that's good. Not yet sorted out the Zen mp3 player....
(BTW I checked that i have the most up to date version of Windows Mediaplayer 11, so it's not that that's causing the problem.)
Further ideas also welcome :-)

Really glad some of your issues were sorted with the scans suggested.

I am not a Vista user but this link may assist you in sorting out the Zen Mp3 player. Have a browse through them to see if any fit the problem you are experiencing -

Someone else may volunteer their expertise regarding more suggestions.

best regards,

Hi Tallin
After much searching I found that there were so many possible causes that I nearly gave up - these included uninstallng Mediaplayer which isn't recommended in vista (or not even possible perhaps?). Anyway, on a mycreativefansite page I found a reference to "Device driver checking" (control panel - device manager - portable devices).
Initially Vista kept telling me that the drivers were indeed up to date, but it persisted in not recognising the Zen player.
So, on a hunch, I went back to Device Manager, went back down to "portable devices" and told vista to uninstall the driver. Then I unplugged the player's usb connection, plugged it back in again and Vista re-installed the driver automatically. It now works :-)
So this would seem to suggest that although the driver was being recognised on some level (eg there was a bo-bomp sound whenever I plugged or unplugged it as with all usb devices), the driver needed to be uninstalled and reinstalled in order for the device truly to regain membership of the computer's recognised peripherals.
This may indeed be a basic solution to many problems of this kind, and I cannot understand why the Creative website doesn't include it in its faqs...
Of course I still haven't found out why the driver ceased to be recognised at some points in the past, but at least I can get it back without massive upheavals... :-)
Kind regards
David

David, that is a basic fix that you initiated, well done, I should have directed you to check in Device Manager as you finally did........I will try to do better next time.

Re your comment "so many causes" etc, that is why I posted that google search link as it is easier for you to nail the cause from the links than it is me to keep posting a maybe fix for you that does not work in the first instance.

Why Drivers cease to work? could be many reasons, latest is not often the best, but in your case it is. As long as you are up and running in the manner that you expect from your system that is all that matters.

Keep in touch if you have any other issues as there are many good volunteers on D-A-L very willing to assist you.

Best regards, and thank you for posting back with your fix...

Thanks Tallin
I am starting a little "technical page" on my website - very personal of course (mainly as an aide memoire to myself) and full of disclaimers, but it might prove useful to some searchers.
I will of course include a link to DAL :-)
When I've uploaded it (in a few hours time) it will be here:
David W Solomons' Music Site
Kind regards
David