My MP3 player is not being recognized by my laptop when I plug in the USB cable. Tried with a Windows 2000 and a Windows XP machine. Have rebooted several times, but no recognition of the device.

There are several things you can try:

1) Try plugging the player into other USB ports. Some players require a "high power" USB port, and most computers/laptops have a mix of high power and low power USB ports. Typically the high power USB ports are found on the back of the computer/laptop.

2) Verify that the USB cable is undamaged.

3) Some players are able to operate in one of two modes, "MSC" and "MTP". Usually you can switch between the two modes via a Settings menu on the player. Some players can only operate in one of the two modes. If your player is set to MTP mode, or can only operate in this mode, you need to have Windows Media Player version 10 or higher installed. (Many older computers have version 9 installed, which won't work with MTP.) You can find this software here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/default.mspx

could be one of two possibilities. one something is wrong the usb wire or two, the player is locked. mine did the same thing when i first got it. i unlocked it and it worked

I opened Media Player and plugged the mp3 player into the usb port and used the feature called Sync and it started downloading my music onto the mp3 player. I also checked the function in my computer under device manager to make sure the usb port was working correctly.. Hope this helps!

Just got a trutech. I have tried plugging the usb in on several computers and each time I get the same message that windows does not recognize the device. I have tried changing usb chords as well.

If you're using the retractable usb cable that came with the player, replace it. I had the same problem. XP recognized that there was a device, but couldn't open it. I was getting a "Driver not installed" error in device manager.

I had a very similar problem with a USB camcroder, drove me crazy! This sounds like a USB device not being recognized, this issue is rather uncommon with XP, it's not the player or device, unless the device is not working proplerly. 9 out of 10 times it's system device manager.

(Solution)
With the device plugged into the USB go to control panel and click on system and navigate to your device manager hardware>device manager, scroll down to Universal Serial Bus Controllers, there should be either an X or an exclamation mark indicating the device/driver is not loaded properly, right click on that line and chose uninstall driver, reboot then plug the device in, if it asks for a driver then put in the CD and let the driver install it. If this still does not work, then repeat the above but instead of choosing uninstall when you right click choose "update driver" and when it asks for a location to the driver, point it to the driver on the CD.

Hope this helps

Make sure you have media player 11
If you can, the best test is to try your player with another PC, to see if you still have the problem. This localises whether the problem is with the PC (most likely the USB) or the player. See the link below (search on "connection problems") for a lot more troubleshooting on this.
Download recovery tool off creative's website.
go to my computer > click on hardware tab >
click on device manager button > in the is next screen on the bottom should have>>universal serial bus controllers
(write these down just in case it cant find them)
right click on them and uninstall
reboot let windows reinstall them
Also told Microsoft hotfix causes this problem try uninstalling the last hotfix
If that doesn't fix it try the USB cable

should have at least windows 2000 sp4 or xp sp1 as operating system. plug into usb port on computer while computer is turned on. computer should recognize and install it as mass storage usb device and assign it a drive letter. sometimes xp will recognize it as a panasonic mtp device. this doesn't matter, you can still drag and drop files on it through windows explorer file manager.

player has problems with windows media player 11. works with wmp 10. player also has problems with vista. firmware was designed for xp. no firmware updates available. you can try dragging and dropping through windows explorer, treating it as a usb mass storage device. it will play folders and songs this way. to get vista to recognize it, format the player through the player's menu ( set-system-format ) not through the computer. take out the battery for 15 minutes. reboot your computer. put battery back in. plug into usb port. hopefully vista recognizes it as usb device

ok i dont know if you have had a solution yet but if you have the operating system Windows XP you dont need the software, just plug your USB plug up to your computer and MP3 and it should install the drivers