Zen is not connected

I found a solution at a Creative dealer site in the UK....it worked for me when nothing else did.

This unit comes with a "hidden" recovery accessory...be careful in this area if you do not know what you are doing.

Hold the power switch to the left and at the same time use a paperclip to push the Rest button on the bottom of the unit....remove the paperclip and as soon as the Creative logo appears on the screen, release the power switch. A recovery menu will appear. I selected "Clean" from the screen and waited about 5 minutes for process to complete. When that was finished I selected "Reboot"....after it rebooted, my computer recognized the unit. I was afraid that my files (music, pics etc) would be lost, but it was all there in perfect condition.

Hope it helps
pashopper

Hey All! had the same exact problem. This actually worked for my zen, vision m 30gb.
Categories: Hardware Date: Feb 10, 2008 Title: Creative Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra "Your player is not connected, please connect your player" A fix for people having problems when trying to update the firmware on Creative Nomad Jukeboxes, specifically the message "Your player is not connected, please connect your player" and the mp3 player being stuck in Recovery Mode.

When trying to update the firmware on my 40GB Creative Zen Xtra, the update utility says "Your player is not connected, please connect your player" and the mp3 player is stuck in Recovery Mode. I did a little Googling and found that is a compatability issue with Windows Media Player 11 on XP and all versions of Vista.

To solve the issue, you need a Windows XP machine (or older) running WMP10. The process for downgrading WMP11 to WMP10 is as follows:

1. Click Start -> Run
2. In the Run dialog, type the following and press OK: %windir%\$NtUninstallwmp11$\spuninst\spuninst.exe
3. Follow the on-screen prompts until WMP11 has Uninstalled
4. Click Start -> Run
5. Type the following and press OK: appwiz.cpl
6. Find the "Windows Media format 11 Runtime" and Uninstall
7. Reboot the PC
8. Open up Windows Media Player and verify it's version 10. If you've got version 9, head to the Windows Media Player 10 download page. Install, reboot, and try updating your firmware once again.

There is a possibility that the unit hanged. What you can do is get a safety pin or a needle and poke that little reset hole until you feel a gentle click. That should reset the unit.

If you have not done so, you can download and install the latest firmware to the player. You can locate the download by going to the 'Support' tab and select 'Downloads'.

There are actually times that the problem lies with the USB Cable which may work intermittently as it can come lose and thus lose a connection during a transfer or something.

I've had the same problem and it took me so many days to find a solution that I've posted a blog entry on how to solve it:
http://flexdevtips.blogspot.com/2009/06/repairing-my-creative-zen-visionm-60gb.html

Hope this helps.

go to device manager, next to creative zen you will see a yellow ! symbol
right click on "creative zen" and pick update driver
tick allow windows to search and install atomaticly (have the zen cd in)
and it will install the driver again
kaz

None of the solutions really worked for me, but finally I succeeded in another way:
- Installed Windows Media Player 10
- Uninstalled every Creative application
- Went to the System -> Device Manager in windows - Creative Zen was there with a yellow exclamation mark indicating driver problem
- Right-clicked the device and chose "Update Driver"
- Suprisingly, now the device was identified as a MTP Player
Everything works now, firmware update, Media explorer, you name it
Hope this works for you

Following helped me: http://flexdevtips.blogspot.com/2009/06/repairing-my-creative-zen-visionm-60gb.html

I tried all these solutions except but a new USB cable that connects my Zen to PC. I bought a new on on ebay and when I connected it to my PC with my Zen attached IT WORKS !!!!!. So you might want to try buying a new USB connector I bought one for less the $ 5 on eBay......


http://cgi.ebay.com/2IN1-USB-SYNC-CHARGER-CABLE-FOR-CREATIVE-ZEN-VISION-M-W_W0QQitemZ290291705354QQcmdZViewItemQQptZOther_MP3_Player_Accessories?hash=item4396bbe60a&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=65%3A12|66%3A2|39%3A1|72%3A570|240%3A1308|301%3A1|293%3A1|294%3A50

Thank you, PASHOPPER. Your solution worked great. It was the least complicated one so I tried it first and viola! worked just like you said. I'm so happy my Vision M Zen is back because I love it, didn't want to buy a new one though, they are so expensive, even more than when I got mine which is 4 years ago. Thanks again, Dimitrie

I had the same problem. I took all my router ports off and connected just my creative vision and it worked. System was over loaded.

i had the same problem
try changing your USB cable

do reply did it work

The issue appears to be with XP itself; I'm not sure if it was some piece of software that I install, or a Microsoft update, but it seems the only fix I can get to work for this is to reinstall XP. It's working fine on my Vista, Win2k, and Ubuntu machines, and if I reboot to a live CD Linux distro, like Ubunto or Knoppix, all is fine. The Creative website had mentioning some registry edits for the USB ports, which did nothing for me in my case. I guess I'm going to have to dig deeper. It's too much of a hassle to reformat the XP partition and start over when everything else works fine.