Bad track most of the songs on my player cause it to freeze up and show 'bad track' on the screen. if its in shuffle mode it just skips it until it finds a normal song. the songs have nothing in common, and even ones i put on a long time ago and had until recently played normally are affected. is it possible to have a virus?

you might have reset to shuffle again

The iPod's shuffle feature lets you randomize playback of albums, songs or even your entire music library. You may also find this feature useful if you want to listen to forgotten tracks in your library or discover songs you haven't listened to yet. Disabling the shuffle feature will return playback of a song list to its standard consecutive order. You can enable and disable the shuffle feature at any time.

Navigate to the main menu. Select "Settings." Scroll to the "Shuffle" option. Select "Songs" or "Albums." If you select "Songs," the iPod Classic will shuffle the songs on whatever song list you listen to. If you select "Albums," the iPod Classic will play all songs of an album you select in order and then randomly select another album. Navigate to the playlist or album to which you want to listen. Play a song to initiate the shuffle. b> iPod Nano and iPod Touch Tap the "Songs" icon on your nano home screen. If you are using an iPod Touch, open the "iPod" application. Navigate to the song list, playlist or album you want to play. Tap the "Shuffle" icon at the top of the list to activate the feature.

that is not 5hf, but rather shf which is short for shuffle. There should be a shuffle button on the deck. You need to turn it off. Shuffle mode randomly plays different songs.

Start playing a track. Click anywhere on screen. Options should show at top of screen. Click on the tool symbol (should look like a bolt.) Click on repeat mode. Click random. This should solve your problem.

All ipod devices track how many plays each song has. When in shuffle mode, the songs with more plays are in turned played more often. This can result in some songs playing multiple times while others are skipped;

//halfs

There is indeed a RANDOM option for this MP3 player. To access it play a song, while the song is playing press the button on the side of the player (the MODE button) Your screen will change. Select the option PLAY MODE. Then scroll down and select RANDOM.

Do you have it set on SHUFFLE? That may be the problem - SHUFFLE will play songs randomly instead of in order.
You can tell if it is in SHUFFLE mode when you look at the screen between the battery ICON and the PLAY ICON -
Press the top right button until there is nothing between those two icons.

I have this same system and it looks like the USB playback is lacking this feature, of switching folders. A workaround is to use shuffle play to jump to one of the last songs in the first folder, then turn off shuffle and skip forward a few songs until you get into the next folder....and so on. Not very good, but for this price I was glad to have USB playback.
Some generic MP3 players will work in the USB port, but they play exactly the same as a USB drive. SO no real solution for this.

i bought new songs on itunes and i got a notice when i was syncing my ipod that said "the file or directory is corrupted and unreadable" and now my ipod skips over the songs i just bought.

well when you add songs to your mp3 player it will auto shuffle just go to your settings and go to music click that and it should go back to ABC order

1-866-726-3475 Sandisk Customer Support

www.sandisk.com

click on support at the top; click on MP3 players,
find your Sansa and click on it there’s a lot of info