A few weeks ago, I fixed a Creative Zen Touch that did not work with Windows Vista. I posted on a few forums, from where I'd gotten some of the clues for how to fix it, and someone contacted me yesterday looking for help.

In the name of posterity, and to help any Googlers out there, here are some quick notes on how to make the Creative Zen Touch work with Windows Vista.

1. You cannot do this using a Windows Vista machine. You need to use Windows XP to apply these fixes.


2. With the latest firmware, the Creative Zen Touch is 100% plug and play compatible with Windows Vista, so applying these changes is all you need to do.


3. Your Windows XP machine cannot have Windows Media Player 11 installed on it. If it does, then the firmware upgrade will half-complete, then the device will reboot and it will be broken completely, neither able to work as it did before, nor move forward. You need to downgrade from Windows Media Player 11 to Windows Media Player 10 to make the firmware upgrade. This involves uninstalling two components in Windows: Windows Media Player 11 and Microsoft User-Mode Driver Framework Feature Packe 1.0 - you can upgrade back to these later using Windows Update.

That all said, the answers are on the creative Web site. You need the latest firmware and the tips on downgrading Windows Media Player 11:

http://support.creative.com/kb/ShowArticle.aspx?url=http://203.211.142.197:80/srvs/cgi-bin/webcgi.exe/,/%3fst=273,e=0000000000608101874,k=9108,sxi=4,case=obj(16737),kb=ww_english_add,varset=ws:http://uk.europe.creative.com

http://support.creative.com/Products/ProductDetails.aspx?catID=213&subCatID=214&prodID=10274&prodName=ZEN%20Touch&subCatName=ZEN&CatName=MP3+Players