The era of bobbin, cassette recorders and players, CD players and vinyl records is increasingly disappearing, and such devices are being replaced by more and more new devices: MP3 players, tablets, smartphones, etc. Vinyl discs remain in high esteem. only among old music lovers who cannot listen to musical material without a characteristic creak emitted by the friction of a diamond needle along the track of the record. Young people are increasingly moving to compact MP3-players with built-in memory, where you can record a huge number of music tracks. But after all, music must first be copied to the player. In addition, not all devices of this type have built-in wireless modules that allow you to receive files or even download music from the Internet using a Wi-Fi connection. And often you can observe a situation where the computer does not see the player when connected. Most often, USB ports are used for direct connection, mini-USB or micro-USB connectors may be present on the devices themselves, so we will consider just such cases.
Why does the computer not see the player?
By and large, almost all problems related to this type of equipment are associated with the absence or incorrect installation of drivers. No less often you can find the player connecting incorrectly to a computer or laptop. Another common situation is the incompatibility of the connected player with the operating system installed on the PC. Finally, the most rare case can be called the presence on the external player of all kinds of locks, not only of a software nature (as, for example, in the case of encryption of internal media using BitLocker), but also physical, when access restrictions, as they say, are “sewn” directly into the player’s chips. Let's try to consider several possible solutions.
The system reports that an unknown device is connected: what to do first?
Let's start with the most basic that you can imagine. For example, you connect a Samsung MP3 player to a stationary computer terminal or laptop, but Windows operating systems, which are most often present on user computers in the post-Soviet space, completely refuse to accept the attached device. What to do in such a situation? First, make sure you connect the player to the correct USB port.
Some models can work exclusively with the standard 3.0, so you need to connect the player through these ports (on computers and laptops they are usually painted blue inside). If the connection is made correctly, but still the Samsung player does not see the computer, it is advisable to completely turn off the PC, connect the player to it, and only then boot the system. If this does not help, proceed further.
Questions regarding installing the player drivers and additional software
The drivers used to initialize the Samsung MP3 player (or any other), the operating system, in theory, installs on its own.
If for some reason the necessary drivers were not found, it makes sense to install them yourself. If you have a companion driver disk available, install from it.
You can also use automated applications like Driver Booster, SlimDrivers or DriverPack Solution. It is possible that they recognize the connected equipment and install the necessary drivers. The first two of these utilities usually turn to the official websites of device manufacturers, the third program first searches for the necessary product in its own database, which significantly exceeds the Windows base, and if there is no such software, it accesses the Internet.
Sometimes you may encounter the problem of connecting "apple" devices that Windows is not recognized. And there is nothing surprising in this, since Microsoft and Apple are long-standing competitors, and each promotes its own hardware and software products on the market. If the computer does not see the iPod, you will obviously have to install additional software such as iTunes (Windows version).
In this case, all relevant drivers will be installed when the device is connected and initialized in an already running program. Sometimes one of the important conditions is to install the latest version of the program.
But back to the usual players, which, in theory, should be compatible with Windows.
If you look at the same Samsung devices, you can often come across recommendations on installing the Kies utility. In general, for all Android-like devices, it is recommended to use exclusively additional software from the manufacturer itself, which must be installed without fail before starting synchronization on a computer or laptop.
Recognition of removable media
When the player’s chip is locked, if possible, it must be removed. True, it is unlikely to be able to independently carry out such actions. However, in the case of protecting the device’s drive from writing, for example, using BitLocker, after connecting the player to the PC, you need to unlock it by selecting the appropriate item from the PCM menu on the drive, which is recognized as removable media in the system.
USB troubleshooting
But suppose that the computer does not see the player via USB even after performing all the above steps. In this situation, it remains to check the operability of the ports themselves and the presence of controller drivers correctly installed for them.
To do this, use the standard "Device Manager", go to the USB controllers section and find out if there are any devices in the list that are marked with a yellow triangle. If they are, you must use the driver update function and provide the system with the choice of the necessary driver.
Along the way, if the computer does not see the player even after updating the control software, check if some device is turned off. If it is detected, it will need to be activated through the RMB menu by selecting the power-on point.
Brief summary
Here is a brief summary of everything that concerns the main problems with connecting players to Windows-based computer systems. As mentioned above, in most cases, troubles arise precisely due to the lack of all kinds of drivers (and not only for the players themselves), so the first thing to pay attention to is their correct installation. If there is an accompanying proprietary software that installs drivers automatically, it is better to give preference to it.