There's a ghost on my MP3-player.

[d.leerium]

The strangest thing happened today. Maybe someone with a better grasp of technical mysteries might be able to shed some light on it? Recently I've been listening to some stuff on my MP3-player in shuffle mode, something I normally don't do. While washing the dishes today, I came across a song I didn't recognise, so I dried my hands to check what it was. The tags clearly identify it as a song called "Highway Appeal" by The Caroline Movement, a band I had never heard of before! I had no idea how this MP3 had ended up on my player, so I plugged it into the PC to check which folder it was in, and whether it was on my HDD as well. The Windows search doesn't give any results, neither when searching the player's internal memory, nor on my HDD. I tried several search terms. The only way to find this file is to toggle the artists on the player's interface itself: there's an entry for The Caroline Movement which then leads me to the album "West By God" with only one song showing up, "Highway Appeal". When I access the file info, its name is displayed as Highway Appeal.mp3. Once again I used the Windows search, but to no avail. Finally I used the folder navigation in Windows Explorer and checked every single folder on my MP3-player, but no such file exists. Yet, the song - having appeared out of nowhere - plays perfectly, and if I may say so, it's pretty terrible Indie Rock which I never would have put on my player deliberately! This whole thing is really bizarre... Could it be some sort of sample track that comes with the retail version of the player and is stored in some hidden region that doesn't show up in the folder navigation? All hidden files are visible, btw.

[Ormion]

Could it be some sort of sample track that comes with the retail version of the player and is stored in some hidden region that doesn't show up in the folder navigation? All hidden files are visible, btw.

 

 

That's what I thought of. All my mp3 players that I owned came with some preinstalled songs most of them completelly unknown.

Either that or your mp3 player is haunted.

[d.leerium]

I'd still go for the latter - after all, there should be some trace of the song in the internal memory... I can't think of anything more spooky than having this kind of Indie Rock on my player.

[GagaISM]

Ghost in the shell for sure!

[Procyon]

A virus?

[d.leerium]

Seems like it's a common 'problem' with Sansa players. I have a Sansa Clip+. Here's what a friend from another forum wrote; don't know about his sources yet, but he seems well-informed...

 

 

 

That'll be a Sansa Fuze, or similar then?
They come with a special preloaded playlist of some really bad songs:
Mona Lisa by Chris Clouse & Carl Mann
Wax Museum by The Red Threat
Angel by The Jones Gang
Leaving Hollywood by Recliner
You Closer by Gretchen Lieberum
Women Wine and Song by Umphreys McGee
Next Time by Stoke 9
Starting to Turn by Andrew Paul Woodworth
Major and Minor by The Procession
Fumaza by Los Pinguos
Even Rats by the Slip
Cobbelstoned Waltz by Alias and Ehren
Danny Boy by Franc D'Ambrosio
Highway Appeal by The Caroline Movement
Little Black Backpack by Stroke 9
Morning After by Kevin Carlberg
Swingset Chain by Loquat
The Music by Felonious.

You can delete them through the player (as you've already discovered), but they were loaded via MTP (media player transfer) mode - they should be in the standard internal "Music" folder, but won't be recognisable to MSC (normal USB external drive address) mode. You could put the player into MTP mode and look at the contents through eg Windows Media Player, or WinAmp and see them that way if you want to do it via PC. Of course, formatting the drive will nuke them - and everything else in the process, but is OK if you can resync all of your own music back onto it easily.

 

I'm not even familiar with the term 'MTP mode', to be frank, but I deleted the file through the player's navigation now and will check for any other unwelcome guests as time permits. It gave me a good scare, though!