Sonic stage not connecting with my sony nw ...

I run Windows Vista and have used Sonicstage to transfer music across to my NW-A3000 whilst running Vista, yet now when I run Sonicstage then plug in the device nothing happens, whereas once upon a time the program would instantly recognise the player and build a library of what was present. I could then transfer, delete, rearrange, rename tracks to my heart's content. Now nothing, not even an error message.
I have tried uninstalling/reinstalling Sonicstage, updating drivers and firmware for the player, even completely wiping all things Sony from my PC and re-downloading the sonicstage installer....... none of which have made any difference.
I'm getting desperate now (aswell as slightly annoyed) as I want to be able to put new music on my player, and can't afford to shell out for a new device for the forseeable future