CREATIVE ZEN NOT RECOGNIZED

Hi there. About a 2 weeks ago I've bought a Creative Zen 8GB player. It comes
with no driver installation - just synchronizing and exploring software. As
it is an MTP device, it should be found and fully recognized by Windows XP
Pro on which I'm running at.

However at my PC it is NOT recognized!!! I tried to plug it in my friends
computer - it was immediately recognized and he could explore it by windows
explorer, Winamp and WMP (10). I also tried to connect it into my work
computer - also with success...

Not with my own PC.

USB's are working well, have no issues with another devices, and ZEN is also
being charged when connected. But not recognized.

I have searched for hours at creative forums, at creative help base, tried
several things that were advised, but with NO SUCCESS!!!

Does it show up in Device Manager, when it is connected? You may have to
clean out any 'Unknown" devices prior for it to work.

I had the same problem as most people on here, I have a Creative ZEN 4GB MP3 player and I have the MTP Device problems. But I found that if you have an SD Card and go to Removable Disk, it treats it as a seperate disk drive and is therefore recognized by the PC. So WMP will find the player ready for sychronization too. After you have the music you want, it will automatically save them to the ZEN music folder. Same goes for video, photos, podcasts, etc. After all your music is transferred go to Memory Card and choose Browse. It will find the SD card with all the music on and it is playable from there. Good luck.

I've been working for a solution to this problem for the last 3-4 hours. I've uninstalled the windows xp SP3 and reinstalled SP2 countless times, and scanned the online forums. Your advice worked like a charm, can't tell you how much time and effort you've saved me, not to mention $200.

Short answer 1:

Be patient things might change with an upgrade?!
But who will put the effort into it? Microsoft or Creative See anser 3 below.

Short answer 2:

Sell your creative by an Ipod, by doing so you solve to problems...no
microsoft dependency and no buggy creative software (i have to reset my
player at least once a week)

This is my respondance with creative.
Summirezed sorry we can't help you. But maybe you will find something
usefull in it. They are kind and well willing in their communication

Dear Sander,

Thank you for replying back to us.

The MTP (Media Transfer Protocol) that the player use to communicate
with the computer is a developed by Microsoft, so it does sound a bit
strange that they would push the entire problem on our shoulder. However
we will be looking for a solution regardless of who's to blame, but if
the problem lies with MTP, only Microsoft will be able to solve the
problem.

Please retain all the previous correspondence when replying to this
email.

Best Regards
Olav
Creative Customer Support Services
Creative Labs Europe

=====================================

Original Message Follows:
------------------------
Dear Olav,

Thanx for trying to help me. I will downgrade to wmp10 for the time
being.

I have to say that microsoft is pushing the ball to you guys. They say
that creative is working on this problem and hopefully soon come with a
solution. So if you wait for microsoft...it could take a while ;-)

Cheers,
Sander
________________________________

Van: CLE Customer Support [mailto:support@europe.creative.com]
Verzonden: wo 28-5-2008 18:46
Aan: Delden, Sander van
Onderwerp: RE: CLE - Technical Support Request (KMM16833050I110L0KM)

Dear Sander,

Thank you for replying back to us.

I'm afraid at the current time I do not have any other solutions, as the
service pack 3 is quite new, it is yet to see if the problem is related
to the our software or if there has to come a solution from Microsoft.

Please retain all the previous correspondence when replying to this
email.

Best Regards
Olav
Creative Customer Support Services
Creative Labs Europe

=====================================

Original Message Follows:
------------------------

Dear Olav,

Thanks for your the tip.

however, it does not work!! Even when i disable all non vital services.
It does not work.

I hope you have another trick. This one looked promissing....since a
conflict is very plausible because wmp10 runs fine. WMP 11 did run fine
unitll SP3 installation.

To give you some more info. My player works fine on other computers with
WMP11 (here (on these computers sp3 is not installed)

maybe you could tell me on which services/driver/installation files the
player relies...than i could just copy these to my pc individually from
my other computer and keep sp3 (this gives a performance boost on my pc)

cheers
Sander

Van: CLE Customer Support [mailto:support@europe.creative.com]
Verzonden: di 27-5-2008 17:20
Aan: Delden, Sander van
Onderwerp: RE: CLE - Technical Support Request (KMM16825594I110L0KM)

Dear Sander,

Thank you for replying back to us.

Try to run a 'cleanboot' as described in the link below, then see if you
can get connection to Windows Media Player 11:

http://uk.europe.creative.com/suppor...p?l=3&sid=6738

Please retain all the previous correspondence when replying to this
email.

Best Regards
Olav
Creative Customer Support Services
Creative Labs Europe

=====================================

Original Message Follows:
------------------------
Dear Reader,

you just send me the explanation of your FAQ. Enfortunaltly it doesnt
work. Tonight i did it again. But again no recognition.

to be clear on my issue:

WMP 11 worked fine with the ZEN. Untill an update of windows xp prof
sp3. After installing sp3 the ZEN device is not recognized anymore.

Downgrading to WMP 10 works. Now the player works as it should (as fas
as I know).

However I want to use WMP 11 like I did before and i want to use windos
xp sp3.

Is it possible to get ZEN 16GB working with windows xp sp3 and
mediaplayer 11? (on a asus amd dual core system)

Your tip doesnt work enfortunatly

I like to hear how to deal with this bug.

cheers,
Sander
________________________________

Van: CLE Customer Support [mailto:support@europe.creative.com]
Verzonden: ma 26-5-2008 15:57
Aan: Delden, Sander van
Onderwerp: Re: CLE - Technical Support Request (KMM16816904I110L0KM)

Dear Sander,

Thank you for contacting Creative Technical Support.

If you are using Windows Media Player 11 and the player cant get
connected, you should enter the 'Device Manager' and double click
'Portable devices' then right click 'MTP device' and select uninstall.
Once that is done you should click 'Action' and select 'Scan for
hardware changes'.

You can enter 'Device Manager' from 'Start' -> 'Control Panel '->
'System' -> 'Hardware' tab -> 'Device Manager'.

If you are asked for drivers you should direct the search to the
'c:\windows\system32' folder.

Please retain all the previous correspondence when replying to this
email.

Best Regards
Olav
Creative Customer Support Services
Creative Labs Europe

[cbl]

hey everyone. i had the same problem with windows xp not recognising my creative zen 16gb mp3 player. I had windows xp service pack 3 installed, but not windows media player 11 (or 10).

This is what I did to get it recognised:
1. Go to start, right click on my computer and click 'manage'
2. Select device manager on left pane.
3. Plug in your creative zen mp3 player. If it is unrecognised by windows, it should appear on the right pane under 'other devices' with a question mark.
4. Double click on creative zen on the right pane and it should open a dialogue box. Click the 'reinstall driver' button, then follow the instructions to 'install the software automatically' in the next box that opens (you may need to be connected to the internet for this step).

Hopefully this should fix the driver for creative zen and windows xp should be able to recognise the device.:D

[5aces]

Indeed it was the MTP device drivers required to recognize the Zen V Plus.
After they installed automatically,a "Portable Device" shows on the device tree,with the Zen player recognized.

If you are running Windows XP or higher and trying to install a MP3 Player that you just bought, then you have to install the Microsoft download "Media Transfer Protocol Porting Kit" (15 mb installed) at the link http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...kInfoContainer or else your PC will never recognize your MTP device. And there is an additional download for Windows XP to install called "Media Transfer Protocol Enhanced Specification" at the link http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

I came across this website looking for help in getting the new Zen I just bought to be installed as hardware to work on Windows XP. These downloads for some unkown reasons are not listed at Creative Windows update website or at Microsoft Windows XP website. Yet without them your MP3 players can't be used to download music MP3 files. Go figure. Wikipedia claims that "Support for Media Transfer Protocol in Windows XP requires the installation of Windows Media Player 10 or higher." I don't know if this is true or not, but I simply updated to Windows Media Player 11 at the same time I installed the "Media Tranfer Protocol Porting Kit" and the "Media Transfer Protocol Enhanced Specification".

Again,I used the steps from post #5 to install the MTP drivers,then intsalled the two links from post #8.
In the device tree(System/Hardware/DeviceManager)have you tried to expand the Universal Serial Bus Controllers branch and then right clicked on USB Root Hubs and updated all those drivers manually?(where you choose the drivers to install from a specific list)

[shumani]

I have the same problem: Windows cannot install the Zen (Searches for a driver to an MTP Device with no result).
I have SP3 installed and WMP 11. - I have tried all the solutions listed, tried updating WMP and WINXP, tried solutions on creative regarding the USB port.
Nothing has worked!
Can anyone please help me?

Followed through every solutions suggested, could not get it to work!!

Found the firmware update at Creative website: http://support.creative.com/download...wnloadId=10115

Download takes ages. Still waiting for the download to complete. Will report back here whether firmward update works or fails.

I had a Creative Zen Micro MP3 player that had trouble being recognized by
the computer. At first I thought that the cable was bad, but that wasn't
the case.

I had also noticed that the headphone jack was coming loose on the inside.
The audio output began to crackle more and more until the device was no
longer useful.

It turns out that the connections where the headphone jack AND the USB jack
were cracked and starting to come apart, so that explained the intermitent
loss of connectivity to the PC.

I can only assume that the cause of all of this is the recent trend in
using lead-free solder.

[shumani]

Downloaded the firmware only to find out that I have the latest version (the downloaded version is even older than what I've got).

Charging via USB SYN adapter is ok. Player still not recognised by winxp SP3 & WMP 11. Tried on my friend's PC (Vista, WMP 10) and the player was recognised even without installing Creative Media Explorer!

I want to downgrade to WMP10 but can anyone tell me how to do that please? I have fresh copy of windows xp (just re-format HDD and re-installed OS) hence there was no previous copy of WMP10.

[begtognen]

i got a solution for your zen. first connect the zen. then right click the my computer icon, then click the manage, then device manager. you will see the zen with a exclamation point. right click it, update driver, but dont forget that the driver cd of your zen should be in the cdrom. then click install automatically on the popup window. this will solve your problem. :)

I bought a new computer with SP3 already installed. The computer wouldn't recognize the Creative Zen (which had previously worked just fine with my old computer running SP2). I read the posts above and hunted down the installation CD which came with the Zen.

Here's what I did:

I put the install CD into the drive.

Then:
My Computer
Manage
Device Manager
Other Devices
Double-clicked on "Creative Zen" (which had a question mark after it)
allowed Windows Update to search

(Now, I should mention that I *also* allowed the CD to install the clunky software that comes with the Zen which I intend to never use. However, on the off chance that it had something to do with the computer finally reconizing my Zen, I thought I should include that info.)

[2112]

I recently bought a Creative Zen 16gb MP3 player and am having similar problems connecting it to Windows XP. I followed the advice on this thread but without success.

The device is not being displayed as unrecognised on Device Manager. Instead it is being recognised as a portable device with no question mark. I double click on it and carry out the reinstall procedures detailed above. When the procedure is complete I am getting a message saying the Creative Media Explorer that is compatable with this device is not installed.

Is there anyway of resolving the problem? Grateful for any suggestions.

[abhijazz.007]

@ 5aces- dude i have installed the mtp kit.but next what to do??please help me out!!

[barnmed]

cbl - u r really cool, ur method worked for me. i've been stuck with this problem for quite sometime. really thankful to u.