Loose Jack The head phone jack on the Sansa e250 is loose and causing the left ear to cut out. I took it apart and noticed the housing for the jack was loose and a contact may be loose/broken. It may require some soldering. To set to the contacts on the board the screen needs to be detached. I did not detach it yet. Is it worth taking apart and soldering?

Your sansa's headphone jack might have something in it or it's getting loose because of wear.

my sansa is not working

check head phones

have you tried other headphones or earphones
some headphones lose connection in the wire  and will cause a short where one side works and the other doesnt
if this is not the problem may have a lose jack on the inside of the player and will probably have to have it serviced

There are videos on YouTube which show how to replace headphone jack on a Sansa, but they are not usually successful. May be replacement time.

i had the same problem, the headphone jack on the sansa is loose. I opened it all up, and saw that one of the connections on the headphone jack was loose. you can sauter it and it should work clearly again.

The jack in the e250s is not made of adamantium, so it can actually go bad; however, if you try different headphones and thus determine that either:
  - All the headphones simultaneously went bad in one side
  - Your left ear has issues
  - The Sansa is only cranking out one channel; and
     -the jack feels a little off, or
     -perfectly good mp3s are being played off-balance; AND the balance has not been misconfigured in Settings.

...well then, the plot's moving forward and you can get your ear fixed, or stop the cat from killing your headphones, or re-load Sansa or Rockbox.org firmware, or fix the Settings, or see to the appropriate repair to the jack (depending on your warrantee status and skill with soldering irons and ordering off Jameco.com etc.)

I have the same problem and read on other forums that it was because of a MusicEQ glitch and that if you swtched it to a non-Normal mode and then back to Normal, the problem would fix itself. This didn't work for me, but maybe it will for you.

(Just got off the phone with Sandisk Tech Support and they basically told me to update to the latest firmware, but that didn't work either so they said that they didn't know what else to tell me and let me go. Not exactly helpful.)

maybe the jack of your headphone is broken. Try with other headphones to see if you hear from the two ears.

i had the same exact problem with mine. Reading around it seems to be a common problem with the Sansa line. I opened mine up and found that one of the solder points that holds the ear phone jack to the main board had come loose. I soldered it back and it works like a charm. Pretty easy too. If you have a soldering iron, just open it up and resolder the solder point that has broken off. You can read instructions for disassembly here: http://www.anythingbutipod.com/archives/2006/11/sandisk-sansa-c200-disassembled.php When you have it apart, looking at it from the side, with the jack to the right, the broken point should be the rear (closest to the circuitry) point. You will see a very small, not sure what to call it, chip on the board you have to solder a connection to. here is a diagram: http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e321/fuzzygoat/sansa-c200-disassembley-8.jpg Hope this helps.