Wow! Major problem just happened with my J3.

[headcoatman]

Please help!!
I was using my J3 at work this morning, paired with my bluetooth headphones. I navigated to another music folder to listen to something different, but all of the info was wrong. Track names were suddenly pointing to different files, cover art was missing or in the wrong place--then after rebooting, the text changed to Korean! I tried rebooting a few more times, switched off bluetooth (in case, for some odd reason, that was causing an issue), and also reset via the tiny hole in the back. Now it said it was the Cowon S9, and not the J3, but was back in English.

I'm really stumped here.

As soon as I got home I connected it to the pc. I right clicked on the J3 in My Computer > properties > tools > check the drive for errors > automatically fix file system errors.
That had no effect.
I ran it again, this time also choosing Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors.
That had no effect.

I attempted to defragment it (it was 39% defragmented). When that was taking too long, I decided to move all my music and video files back to the pc. Fragmentation now showed 0%.

I applied the new firmware, v2.25.
That had no effect.
Then I moved back a few of the music folders.

Here's how I get to my music on the J3. From the main menu I choose music; from there I select Folders, then J3. From there it's all messed up now. It's just a list of folders that ALL say J3. I even forget what they used to say (terrible memory).
Clicking on the first "J3" brings up a list of swf and jpg files.
Clicking on the 2nd "J3" brings up a partial list of some of the music I transfered back to the player. That is, a list of some of the music folders, eg:
[1970b-Journey in Satchidananda], or [1971a-Universal Consciousness] (this is how I labeled them; some records by Alice Coltrane). But there's nothing inside.
This was always the easiest way for me as it listed from there all of the music folders I had put on the J3, and I could just scroll through and choose an artist or a specific album residing in the artist folder. I have all folders labeled as either [Artist] or [Artist - Album Title]. But now I can't do it.

I'm probably going on too long about the exact errors; the real question is what could have happened, and how can I fix this?
BTW, I also tried updating the database and resetting to defaults, but nothing has had any effect.

Please, I hope someone can help me with this. Is there a way to restore the Cowon to "as new" state, such as reformatting a pc?

Thank you very much.
Erik

[DSperber]

I'd suggest starting over.

I assume you're in MSC connection mode (as opposed to MTP).

FORMAT the J3 (both internal and external storage, separately), using this recommended SD Formatter utility.

Then "safely remove hardware", disconnect the J3 from the PC, re-boot. This will recreate all default initial "factory" system folders.

Then re-connect to the PC, and hopefully you should once again get your normal Windows drive letter(s) assigned, and you should once again be able to re-copy your music over.

[headcoatman]

Thank you so much DSperber, that worked perfectly. I was in a panic that it had become a virtual paperweight.
I went with the defaults--quick format, format size adjustment off, and it fixed all the issues and still kept the new firmware version.
You're the best!