I have had many problems with my Mark II. I recently upgraded to 1.01 hoping, but it is worse. I am on Win2k using USB to sync.
Now my playlist on the unit is empty (lost all my songs??), and opening the car database connects ok and then gets "the download process failed during stage 4: error 0xfffffffe".
So now I have no music, and cannot get the player to connect so I can re-download my music!!
Help!!

I have had many problems with my Mark II.

Sorry to hear that!

A quick check of your posts on this BBS so far shows that you haven't talked publicly about your previous problems up until this one. (Previously, you have posted feature requests on the Wish List forum.) Just out of curiosity, what were the other problems you had? They might help us diagnose the current problem.


I recently upgraded to 1.01 hoping, but it is worse.

1.0 had some bugs in its code, especially with respect to extra-long fields in ID3v2 tags. Some of the bugs in 1.0 were rather severe. How long did you wait before upgrading to 1.01? (And why did you wait to install 1.01 at all? You should always apply their latest upgrades.) Were you getting synch errors before the upgrade?


Now my playlist on the unit is empty (lost all my songs??), and opening the car database connects ok and then gets "the download process failed during stage 4: error 0xfffffffe".

You might try rebooting the computer, rebooting the Empeg a couple of times, and trying a couple more synchs. If there are errors in the database, this has sometimes been known to force the unit to self-correct the database if it's corrupted.


So now I have no music, and cannot get the player to connect so I can re-download my music!!

Hmm, maybe extra re-synchs isn't going to help. It sounds like your problem may be more serious than that, perhaps hardware trouble. Okay, first, use the information in this FAQ entry to see what the player is doing at boot up. Then contact [email protected] with that information. They should be able to help you solve your problems, hopefully without losing the music already stored on the player. Keep us updated on what's going on, maybe we can help.

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Tony Fabris

Thanks for the quick reply. I havent posted all my problems because they all "self corrected" and went away, but came back eventually. All my problems (except one that worries me, I'll explain in a bit) are sync related, getting stage X errors.
Once this same thing happened where the player acted 'blank' losing all music and playlists, and I couln't connect. A reboot/power off fixed it that time. Not this time though.
My prev prob (v1.00) was that I would sync, and after there would still be bold playlists in emplode (I think that means there is something to do for the next sync), and my unattached list would be filled with both songs and playlists (I dont use that playlist at all - just simple artist|album|songs so far). I though it might be related to the fact that I had ripped all my mp3's at 128, then started re-ripping at 192 with better software, so I put all my current albums (around 20) under a main playlist of "128" to keep them around temporarily and copied the new songs like before. I thought the dups were a prob, so I upgraded to 1.01 (put off cause just for lazyness and didnt have the right serial cable for a while), then deleted the 128 playlist, synced and was ok for a sync. Then deleted some unfifished syncs and synced and all was ok (I thought I was doing too much during one sync, deleting and dropping new songs) and it was going OK. Then it happened again (unfinished sync with the bold playlists), then did one more sync and the latest "problem" happened.
Again, now the player thinks it is completely blank (lost my user info too and no playlists) and opening the player in emplode gets the stage 4 error and won't open in emplode. So now I cant even see the emplode playlist or try syncing anymore cause it wont 'attach', which is why it is bad enough to post now.
I don't mind 'losing' the music since I am only 20 albums in and can re-add them all, but I am not sure how to start all over since I cant open it.
The other prob I had was last time I was playing in my car, the songs started poping and scratching, and I thought that since it was my first time listening to that album that it was a bad rip, but going to song after song it got worse and worse. I turned the player off and let it sit for a minute, then turned it back on and the same songs were just fine.
Now I wrecked my car and it is in the shop so I havent used it wnough to see if that problem is persistant or a one time glitch. So it is here at home and I thought I would use this time to finish ripping and uploading the rest of my cd's, but of course now I have this problem.
My friend that has one of these too thinks I should just send it in to get fixed. What do you think? This is pretty frustrating. I was trying to give it time since I figured it was just 1.0 issues and it was just tempormental, but I think I am beyond thinking that anymore.
Any ideas on how I should proceed? Is there a way to start over (format, restart syncing) or am I beyond that and should send it in? Now is a good time since I can ship it tue and have a few weeks before getting my car back.
Thanks again for the reply. I did send the origional post last night to support (with the log) with no response yet (of course since its the holidays).
Brad

Contact [email protected] and arrange to get your unit repaired under warranty. The random "pops and scratches" are a likely sign of a bad RAM chip, and if some of the RAM is bad this can account for a whole host of problems.

You can check this by connecting up to a serial terminal (hyperterm in Windows for example), powering up the unit and very quickly pressing Ctrl-T - this will drop you into self test, and any RAM errors will be reported (email a copy of the output to us).

Rob

My prev prob (v1.00) was that I would sync, and after there would still be bold playlists in emplode.

This was a known bug in version 1.00. It was corrected in version 1.01. This is the bug I mentioned before. It isn't caused by your rips, it's caused by your tags. It's the "long V2 tag field" bug. If the MP3s are tagged with V2 tags, and any of the V2 fields have very long strings in them, the database chokes.

This is why you should always upgrade to the latest version, because their upgrades fix bugs like that. You should have said something when it first happened, we could have helped you with it.


I don't mind 'losing' the music since I am only 20 albums in and can re-add them all, but I am not sure how to start all over since I cant open it.

You could use their disk formatter software to start all over again if you wanted. There's a FAQ entry on upgrading the hard disk-- buried inside that FAQ is instructions on how to apply the disk formatter upgrade. You can do this without opening the player.

But you shouldn't do that yet, because the root of all your problems is something else completely:


The other prob I had was last time I was playing in my car, the songs started poping and scratching

Which, as Rob said, indicates a bad RAM chip. Don't do anything else to the player until you've sent it in and had that problem corrected.

Since there's no way to be sure how badly corrupted your database is because of the RAM problem, I would recommend doing the disk-format after you get the player back from Empeg with the RAM fixed. If you apply 1.01 and re-install your music again, all your problems should go away for good.

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Tony Fabris

Since there's no way to be sure how badly corrupted your database is because of the RAM problem, I would recommend doing the disk-format after you get the player back from Empeg with the RAM fixed. If you apply 1.01 and re-install your music again, all your problems should go away for good.

or you could get emepg to wipe it while they fix the RAM before they send it back. There may be a charge for that though.

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Murray 06000047