Ok, this all my fault, but I fell while listening to my Zen mp3 player and when I tried to listen to it, the screen looked like it had frozen The highlighter that showed which song I wanted to play wouldn't move, even though I heard the "clicky" sound of the touchpad moving. Just, nothing would work. So I attempted to clear the memory. . A screen came up that said this:

Recovery Mode____________________
Creative Zen Touch v0.0.8
1. Clean Up
2. Format All
3. Reload Firmware
4. Reboot

Now, I was desperate and tried to click everything, but when I did, it displayed the underside of a cd and the words "Hard Disk Problem".

Can anyone tell me what happened and what to do? I have not opened up the mp3 player but I assume that there is a disk inside that is not reading properly, but I am not certain and I don't want to risk screwing it up even more. Can someone please help me?

Michael Gebreweldi, May 2008

After 2 weeks of trying various computers and numerous posted “solutions”, this is what finally worked for me. I am not guaranteeing that you’ll have success.
In the recovery mode on the zen touch…
Cleaned all then reformatted
Found my wife’s old laptop that had no creative hardware or files on it. This computer was not running Microsoft® Windows Media® Player 10 or 11 but it did have an earlier version.
Downloaded the newest (plays for sure) firmware, from the creative.com site,http://support.creative.com/downloads/welcome.aspx?nDriverType=4&showdetails=1&bLatest=1 to the laptop. You need to download the latest firmware for it to work on a Win Xp computer.
Attached the zen to a USB 1 port. I don’t know if that made a difference. It was recognized as a MTP device.
On the laptop, I clicked on the firmware icon. A language window appeared. Put my cursor over English but didn’t click yet.
At that point- on the zen touch-clicked reload firmware.
When the zen touch prompted to begin reload, I immediately clicked on English.
That’s it. It worked. Good luck! Might work on other zens as well.

dylan772, June 2008

After 2 weeks of trying various computers and numerous posted “solutions”, this is what finally worked for me. I am not guaranteeing that you’ll have success.
In the recovery mode on the zen touch…
Cleaned all then reformatted
Found my wife’s old laptop that had no creative hardware or files on it. This computer was not running Microsoft® Windows Media® Player 10 or 11 but it did have an earlier version.
Downloaded the newest (plays for sure) firmware, from the creative.com site,http://support.creative.com/downloads/welcome.aspx?nDriverType=4&showdetails=1&bLatest=1 to the laptop. You need to download the latest firmware for it to work on a Win Xp computer.
Attached the zen to a USB 1 port. I don’t know if that made a difference. It was recognized as a MTP device.
On the laptop, I clicked on the firmware icon. A language window appeared. Put my cursor over English but didn’t click yet.
At that point- on the zen touch-clicked reload firmware.
When the zen touch prompted to begin reload, I immediately clicked on English.
That’s it. It worked. Good luck! Might work on other zens as well.

dylan772, June 2008

sounds like your hd went on ya... your going to have to buy a replacement hard drive on ebay or just go all out and buy a new touch.

joshua Kerns, May 2008