[r-man]

My brother's Creative Zen MP3 player has stopped working. The warranty has expired, so is there any way of fixing it?

When it is turned on, it just freezes. It gives several options, including reboot, format all, reinstall firmware. Reboot works, but brings you back to this point. Any of the other options result in a "hard disk problem" message. Any ideas, or is it unfixable?

[Serpico]

Go to the Creative website. They've got a lot of updates new drivers etc for current and discontinued models. It could be that reinstalling/upgrading the firmware will fix it. If not some Creative players us notebook hard drives which should be easy to replace. Check the Creative forums for people with similar faults.

regards
Serpico (Zen Xtra owner).

[Serpico]

Forgot to mention, there's more than one version of the firmware available. The 'plays for sure' upgraded firmware formats your player, so you'll lose all your music. I've upgraded to the version before this, and have no intention of upgrading to any MS enforced firmware.

[squeek]

Does it appear in Windows as a hard drive?  If so, you might be able to run a disk check to see if there's damaged sectors on it.

[Jim]

I fixed my brother in law to be's zen xtra mp3 player and have it working in my possesion as he give up on it and purchased an ipod 
Don't install the new firmware  as I have read a lot of bad things about it killing the players. I installed it and it works ok. Try reinstalling the original firmware again.
What I did to fix it was stripped it all down, sprayed the back of the circuit board with contact cleaner and cleaned it off, reassembled and formated the hard drive and reinstalled the firmware. If none of this works then try a new hard drive. There are loads of forums about zen mp3 player dotted about t'web. google is your friend