Syncing my Philips Aria mp3 player

[nadyasidhe]

So I had to reformat my laptop, and when I "sync" my Philips Aria GoGear mp3 player, I gain nothing in my Windows Media Player. It's empty, and the music on my mp3 player is all there.

Do I assume that "sync" is a misnomer? I thought "synchronization" was putting the same info on each item. But it looks like nothing gets put back on the laptop.

It looks like I'll have to totally re-load any material via ripping CDs to get the stuff back into Media Player, and that "synchronization" in this case, is a load of poo.

Your experiences?

[beafarhana]

I haven't got a Phillips, but have you checked that the settings are actually set up to transfer from the handheld to the laptop, as well as vice versa.

(And profound apologies if you've already done this very obvious thing and it still hasn't worked!)

[nadyasidhe]

Do you mean the settings in Windows Media Player?

I can't find anything in it that refers to it, nor can I find anything when I search the web regarding either of them..

The quick-start guide for the mp3 player is uh ... unrevealing.

[beafarhana]

I was assuming there was some kind of Philips desktop software, but then I had a "Duh!"/slaps forehead moment- even with the Desktop software, I don't think you can actually synch your Aria files direct into your Windows Media Player library.

The thing is I'm pretty sure that the Windows Media Player programme doesn't actually "host" the files in your library, it just knows where they are on your hard drive (Sorry, I'm not very technical at explaining), so the WMP hasn't actually *got* any music files itself at all.

So rather than trying to synch from your Aria to your WMP library (which, as I said, I don't think is technically possible), what you need to do is synch all your Aria files to your My Music folder. You should be able to do this with the Philips software/desktop interface, but if not then you can do it manually very easily, by cutting & pasting, or dragging & dropping. Then once all your mp3 files are on your hard drive, you can do a search for WMP to find & add all the new files from your music file.

All Quick Start guides are rubbish! The full manual is available online here