Windows Media Player help please, sync files

OK, so I just got a new mp3 player. A sansa express. I have to use this stupid windows media player to sync files to the player. Windows media player (WMP). Problem I am having is I can't sync the files I want to the player cause WMP is a piece of shit. I have roughly 15gb of music files. When I try to scan my folders to add them to the media player About 1/3 of the music is missing. For example I have Tupac: All Eyez on me. I ripped the cd to my pc from a legit copy. I converted the WMA files to MP3. Yet it refuses to recognize the files. I have tried scanning the folders that contain the files like 10 times.

Is there a way to transfer files to this player by not using windows media player? Maybe some other type of media player that doesn't suck. Or is there some trick I need to know so I can get all my cd's on the media player? This is really stressing me out.

Another problem I have is the way WMP stores the files. For example if I want to listen to any song featuring a artist, example: Spice one featuring method man, then instead of WMP storing the files under spice one, it will store it under the artist spice one featuring method man. This is stupid. Any ideas here? If I can get files to this thing without using WMP then I would be a happy camper.

I have also tried taking the files directly and right clicking on them to send to the sansa express. Unfortunatly the only option I have to send the fles to are like C/ or external drive F/. All my music is stored on a external drive. If I go to "start", "my computer" then I see the sansa express listed as a external storage device. I just don't understand why it doesn't show up as a place to send files to when I right click on a file, like external drive F/ does.

Yeah, in the Sansa's settings you find one that makes it look like a harddrive to the system.

Once you've got that properly set, just open up an explorer pane and drop your music into the music folder. You may also have to do a "Tools:Folder Options:View:Show Hidden Files and Folders" because I think that the Sansa hides those folders by default.

In fact, you might be able to see it in the explorer view normally anyway...I seem to remember thinking that when it wasn't in hard drive mode, it was in MTP mode, which should show up under "My Computer," but will look like a named device of type "Portable Media Player" instead of a hard drive.

I don't have a sansa in my hand, but I bought a couple as gifts last Christmas. I have a very favorable view of them as portable media devices.

FalcomAdol said:

Yeah, in the Sansa's settings you find one that makes it look like a harddrive to the system.

Once you've got that properly set, just open up an explorer pane and drop your music into the music folder. You may also have to do a "Tools:Folder Options:View:Show Hidden Files and Folders" because I think that the Sansa hides those folders by default.

In fact, you might be able to see it in the explorer view normally anyway...I seem to remember thinking that when it wasn't in hard drive mode, it was in MTP mode, which should show up under "My Computer," but will look like a named device of type "Portable Media Player" instead of a hard drive.

I don't have a sansa in my hand, but I bought a couple as gifts last Christmas. I have a very favorable view of them as portable media devices.

Click to expand...

Thanks, I think I can send files to this thing using the explore option. Problem is I have to add a whole folder instead of just one song at a time. Better then nothing I guess. I have also been researchig other media players as well.

Yeah, Windows Media Player is a shitty Syncher....

Here's what I do with my girlfriend's sansa:

1. Create a Playlist in Itunes.
2. Drag the playlist into a folder on the desktop (Copies the files there).
3. Drag those files into the music folder on the device
4. Delete those files on the desktop.

It's not actually all that bad as a syncher, but it's pretty awful at managing very large libraries of music in my experience.

If you've only got a hundred or so CDs, you're probably alright, but once you're reserving entire hard drives for your CD collection, things break down.

Also, it has some exceptionally annoying default behaviors in terms of attempting to sync every time you connect the device etc. You can stop it from doing that, but because of the way that windows works, you might find that the system has different settings depending on which usb port you actually connect to.

I'm a big proponent of windows as a platform, but what's been done in the name of usability for casual non-computer users is just unconscionable, IMHO, and makes everything WAY more complicated than it needs to be if you actually want to stop it doing stupid shit.