advice requested Driver Miss match

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Kalvis82

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Topic Posted on 12/13/2025 at 12:15:37

I've had the player since it first came out, and found it one day, while digging in my shed. Since then I got a new charger, the orignal. But I found a USB kit with the various tips to fit over and thus charge the zen extra. It worked for charging the battery. And the AC jack is 1.7mm and apparently, one can also charge it with a sony play station portable Sony wall plug.

The All usb based cable, supplies 5v, 2amp; .500 over. But upon booting it up, the player entered rescue mode, and using the built in menus to clean, format all, reload os, none of that reset it to factory restock. And upon booting up, it keeps showing firmware problem.

As time went on, I bought a new ide hard drive, those 2.5 in, thinking, maybe the original hard drive is bad; since its obvious that the firmware is on that internal hard drive. I think this because the player would not boot if the hard drive is taken out. And I still have an old windows xp laptop, with the latest service pack 3 installed.

But when I use the original charger as I found one on ebay; I replaced the battery; and installed a new hard drive, the screen still showed firmware problem and boots in rescie mode.

Now the player connects, where it shows the arrow with the file icon, and in device manager, its not set up correctly, as it repeadetly registerrs as the nomad zen v; oh and I got the original creative media source software from internet archive, and a program that will mount ISO files to install. I got all the firmware installed, and the nomad explorer.

My question is - has anyone managed to fix the dirver missmatch? or does that even matter? if the firmware is corrupt, how do you repair it? Because the player connects, its registered in device manager with no exclamation points. I got an old school IDE 2.5 in USB hard drive encloser box coming soon. Because my next moves are

a- to mount the original 30gb and see if music will copy over, once the drive is formated; and test the original drive.
b - check out the 40GB IDE 2.5 in (which is currently installed) in the zen extra. And I used the menu to format the new drive and it showed 39,0000 something GB;
c- possibly even downngrade the old laptop to the original windows XP, using a boot drive method, via USB; and even considering maybe putting Windows 98se on the XP laptop

Mind I have you, I got virtual box installed on my windowd 10 laptop and ran XP on there. I managed to get the zen extra player to be detected by the nomad explorer (briefly) and thinking that the usb drivers built into xp are the only ones that will work; and obviously can't repair / update the firmware, if the computer can't connect to it. And whats odd, is when I go itno windows explorer, the zen extra icon shows like a mini zen micro and registered as a 20MB;

And apparently, the corrupt firmware is stopping the PC from actually seeing it, and thus installs the wrong drivers

The whole point of using an encloser box is to run right / read tests and see if the original hard drive will mount in the encloser box and show as 30GB; and I'm stuck with the 40GB hard drive as you can't return it; so one of them will be used as a USB external hard drive, via the encloser box. See modern enlcosure boxes for 2.5 in drives are sata 3, so the older IDE (40 pin) will not fit the sockets; and local retailers don't sell any IDE based "docking" boxes, or connectors; but amazon and ebay has them; and thrift stores and flee markets why even have them;

And P.s, the firmware, drivers, software search on google, when you get on creative labs from the search engine (and not direct) the drivers, firmware, software versions are all the same for 95/98/2000/Me/XP

And why resurrect this? phones have numerous notifications play over, and it lowers the volume and some older versions of android, have volume limiters; and don't want use a phone as the main; Ive used a flash drive in my car, but a zen extra can hold may more music, on one device than what the radio can support.

The summary - the above is what I tried, and got, and of course to rule out if it was a power issie, a bad hard drive, a bad old worn out battery; and even got new mini usb cables; and have 50 roughly spent on accessories as it was needed; like the original charger got chewed up, the wire that connects to the player; the other end is a common detachable cord.

The player will not reset to factory default and there seems to be a dirver miss match. And spent hours and hours digging because in high school, the player worked. And I even kept my xp sofrware but for whatever reason the cd rom was not kept with the stash; the player works, the battery charges; it connects, but a dirver miss match; and the original creative media source does not detect it.

Windows updates have been shut down. Even for windows 10; you have to find archives elsehwere.

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