Brian: Interesting, though the file system is currently FAT16, not FAT32. The way to test your hypothesis is relatively straight forward. If chkdsk reports the file system as being free of errors, but the Book Port still has trouble with the card, you may be on to something. Generally when users have problems, they also have a corrupt file system, and reformatting fixes both the file system and fragmentation at once. Rob Meredith >>> buhrow@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 09/13/05 03:36PM >>> Hello. Let me appologize in advance if this message is not completely well formed. I'm still working out the details of what I think might be a filesystem handling bug in the Bookport firmware, versions 2.x. It might exist in the 1.x versions of firmware as well, but I can't test that. A number of users on this list have complained recently that they have gotten strange error messages when they've tried to access files that they've transfered to their Bookports. When they recopy the data to their Bookports, all is well. I too have experienced something like this, and believe I have an understanding of where the problem is, and a possible work around. The Bookport uses flash cards formatted with the FAT32 filesystem, the traditional "MS-DOS" filesystem which has been used, with little modification by OS's from Microsoft since DOS 2.x. You might say it has become the de facto lingua franca for portably allowing non-Windows devices to interoperate with the Windows operating system. (Windows now uses NTFS by default, but it continues to support the FAT16 and FAT32 filesystem formats, and many people continue to choose to use this format, precisely because it is understood by so many different devices and fixit programs.) As part of its operation, Bookport writes little"placeholder" files on the flash card, which it uses to "remember" where you were in a file, and which file you were last reading. These files are updated when ever you do things like press the reading key to stop and start the Bookport, or press the * and # keys to select a new file to read. When files are deleted from the FAT32 filesystem, the first character of their names are changed to a "?", and the blocks associated with their contents are marked as free. When new files are added, their names are filled in in the first available location in the directory in which the file is placed. This slot can either be a completely unused slot, i.e. one which has never been used before, or it can be one which was previously used by a now deleted file. As time goes by, and a filesystem is used more and more, the number of free directory entries which contain the remains of former files goes up and up. What I have found is that if I add files to the Bookport, then delete different files from the Bookport, the likelihood that I will be unable to access one or more of the files I added when the Bookport is disconnected from the host computer goes up. On the other hand, if I first make my deletions, then add my files, I can be reasonably sure all will work fine. This is where I become somewhat confused. My Theory is that Bookport does not like a lot of gaps in its directories. When it tries to create its placeholder file the first time a user accesses a newly added file in stand-alone mode, it becomes confused about where it should place the file in the directory. When this happens to me, I get the message: FS write error, unable to allocate P R O J structures, repeated three times, folowed by the message: application write error. Sometimes with MP3 files, I get the message: Audio file read error. My guess is that this problem is related to the problem Linette has been having, although she has been getting different error messages. But then, she's running a newer version of firmware than I am, and it could be that that makes a difference too. So, to summarize, I believe there may be a problem in the Bookport's onboard filesystem code, where if a user adds a bunch of files to a flash card, then deletes some files, some of the newly added files will be inaccessible to the Bookport once it is running in stand-alone mode. I believe this can be worked around by assuring that if a user makes any deletions desired from the card before adding things to the card. However, if this really is a bug with the filesystem handling code in the Bookport, then it should be found and fixed, or, over time, every flash card that gets used by active readers, will eventually display this behavior so often, that users will be forced to reformat their flash cards regularly to get them working again. If I'm completely off base here, please let me know. -Brian