My Sansa E280 mp3 player Keeps freezing everytime I go under my "unknown" section. It says Bad Track for most of the songs in that section and it freezes. Also in my unknown section most of the songs won't work. they work on my computer but not on my mp3 player. Is there a way I can unfreeze it without it needing to die to do so. It's done this now four times. Sometimes It freezes in different sections of music as well. It's refurbished. I got it from Overstock.com.

try using recovery mode with the sansa.fmt file and update the firmware. this will erase all your music from the device so you will have to reload all your songs but it will probably fix the issue.

I experienced a similar problem caused by corrupt files saved on the internal memory of my e280.
(I could not delete/remove the files) I had to format the internal drive of the e280
and re-copy the files back on to the unit. Works great now. When formatting the device
use the command from windows. (ie right click on the internal memory icon and select format)

Note: Formatting will remove/delete all the files (eg music,photos..) from the e280 so make sure that
you have backups.

Cheers

The songs are in the wrong format. this player will not play iTunes, for instance.

Sansa Fuze supports MP3, WMA, secure WMA, Audible (AA), audiobooks and podcasts in
WMA and MP3 file formats.

try formatting your mp3 player and then syncronizing songs back on to the mp3 player.

I should have Googled this before posting. I'm not sure if I found the solution here or elsewhere but...
I deleted the /system/database folder and after it restarted and rebuilt the database the 'Bad Track' was gone. I was able to load the player with MP3s and it has worked flawlessly since.

That means that somewhere in your music collection is a song with bad formatted ID3 tags. You can download an ID3 tag tool like MusicBrainz Picard to go through your songs and determine which tracks might be bad.

For the bad tracks go Under Settings, look for Mode or USB Mode. Put the unit in MSC (if that's available) or Rhapsody.

Connect it to the computer. See what driveletter it is :F: Sansa E280...G: Sansa E280... whatever it is.

Click Start/Run and type in chkdsk F:/f (or G: or whatever the letter is) . That will check and may fix the bad files.

I hope that helps
Please rate accordiingly
Thank you
Computerrep

You have to make sure that the device is on MSC mode...then make sure your device is plug in to the computer..Then go to programs - accesories - windows explorer, find the SanDisk in my computer, go to media, music and delete them from there.
Either under sync pane in windows media player it will show your music when it's connected. just click the plus signs for what song you need to get rid of, right click and click delete.
Hope this helps
If you still not able to delete it let me know so I can have you try something else...
P.S.Please rate accordingly...
Thank You
Computerrep

Well To Get It To Power Off You Just Hold Down The Power Button For Like 15 seconds. That Does The Trick. But As For The Unknown Artist Bit...I Dont Have A Clue!

I get the same problem with my Sansa e280. If you find a solution, can you post it? Thanks, Jim