How to del .chk files on mp3 player

[jward52]

SanDisk apparently has lousy tech support and hasn't bothered to respond for over 1 week, so I'm figuring this one out myself. Several weeks ago, my Sansa e140 lost 80% of the mp3 tunes and in their place were a 288mb folder of some unknown file. I deleted wwhat songs were left over and grew tired of waiting for Sandisk to help, so I started checking it out myself.

Using XP's cmd line, I was able to find the files were fragments, or .chk files, but I can't delete them.
del k:\found.000\*.chk command says that there are 102 files, but they couldn't be deleted due to an incorrect parameter.

Does anyone have a clue about this? It uses the FAT32 file system, but I'd rather not try to format the flash drive for fear of erasing any of the player's operation files. There are two files there named music.sec and music.lib. Help!

 

[erikhertzel]

Why do you need a cmd line? Simply use explorer and sort by .chk files and hightlight them and delete them.

Erik

 

[jward52]

The problem is the files won't show up in Explorer. Only with the cmd line did I find 102 .chk files, apparently created when something chewed up the file system. Also, I cannot cd to the drive...had to do the del command from the C: prompt to find out what was on the drive, which is K:. It wouldn't delete the files due to an incorrect parameter, but it's the only way I could find the file info. Screwy problem, hey? The .chk files are occupying 288mb of the 1gb flash drive, nearly the same amount of space the mp3 tunes occupied.

 

[erikhertzel]

make sure that you are showing hidden files...Tools Folder Options View and show hidden files and folders, etc...

 

[SimonDavies]

I for one would be a little more concerned as to why the device failed. You may well find that the flash ram is going to fail sometime soon. If you can try seeing if Sandisk have a recovery utility on their website for the device as you may well have to do a low level format and disk scan on it.

Also worrying is the message about the incorrect parameter, generally speaking USB devices will allow you to use the same dos commands on them as fixed devices, only if there is something wrong with the device will you have issues (the same can be said for fixed drives giving you spurious messages as well).

SimonD.

The real world is not about exam scores, it's about ability.

 

[jward52]

The dos command I used, the only one I know of so far that works to see the 102 files on the drive is...
C:\del K:\found.000\*.chk - then comes the incorrect parameter note for each file it lists.
Can't cd to the drive. Weird.
Norton wipe info shows 2 files, one of them with a .lib extension and the other one I forgot. SanDisk's support sucks! It's been over a week since my complaint was "assigned" to a support agent.

 

[linney]

MP3 Files Virtually everybody I know who's lost a bunch of MP3 files knows which files are the MP3 files they've lost. Really, you don't need either of the above UnCHK or FileCHK programs! Just rename the files so they have an MP3 file extension. Then see which ones actually play! The next problem is how to rename all the MP3 files by song title and/or artist. Luckily, there are several perfectly good MP3 ID3 utilities out there that can automate the renaming task. You can search the web and find several, but my favorite software site is SourceForge (because like the UnCHK program, all their software is free and open-source). SourceForge has the following Windows MP3 ID3 projects:"


Recover CHK Files

http://www.ericphelps.com/uncheck/

Plenty of other recovery software listed here.

http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Disk_Management/Error_Checking_and_Repair/

 

[jward52]

linney, thanks for the tips on the software - I'll likely have to use one of those since Sandisk apparently doesn't intend to help. The mp3 files are no big deal and can be replaced easily, but the issue is removing the .chk files. They cannot not be renamed or accessed by normal methods, for some unknown reason(see previous posts). They are occupying 288mb of space on the 1gb flash drive - too much!

 

[linney]

Have you access to any other machine that you can test this drive with?

What about a 9x Startup Disk and trying ScanDisk from DOS, perhaps even Fdisk /MBR if that is able to have any result on a flash drive?

You could also try XP's Recovery Console and run ChkDsk /r and again for what it is worth, and if it will work on a flash drive, FixMbr?

310497 - HOW TO: Add More Power to Recovery Console By Using Group Policy in Windows XP Professional

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;310497&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

235364 - Description of the SET Command in Recovery Console

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;235364&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

Can you copy off the files you are worried about losing, they might even be part of the problem?

 

[jward52]

The only thing I care about here is getting rid of the chk files so I can make sure there's nothing else wrong with the player. I have a 9x lab rat/tester machine, but doubt if that will access the player without installing stuff like usb dos drivers, etc. It's worth a try. I'll repost later today. Thanks!

 

[jward52]

I missed a reply from SanDisk - had to check their ebox system. Kinda goofy. Anyway, they said to reformat the thing by the normal method in windows. I shoulda known it'd be that easy, but was worried that would mess with the player's OS. I tried UnChk from Eric Phelps, but it couldn't find the files, so maybe windows just thought they were .chk files? Anyway, all is cool & back to normal.