I had 4gb of mp3s on my player and worked fantastic since day 1.

I decided I just wanted to clean it all out and used either mp3 player utils 4.03 or swissknife v3 whichever, I had 4gb now only 2gb..

Any ideas? Saying I'm upset is an understatement.

Help

Hey "NeoMuzic" well it seems like you have a hacked player. The seller sold you a player that was actually 2GB but marked up to act like a 4GB player and thats why you are having that problem. In reality 4GB players are still being made and are not yet available, so although you paid for a 4GB you only got a 2GB which is better than some others who have only got 512MB or 1GB or less. I think you should contact the seller or if you purchased it on ebay lodge a complaint against the seller as most sellers are getting away with ripping people off.

I read about this but I did infact have 800 songs on the player before I formated it. he did warn me not to format it.. I've emailed the guy asking how it was formated so I had 4gb. Infact, I loved it so much I convinced a few people to buy the same exact one and they all have 4gb (you can see its 4gb because of the amount of data on it as well as Windows, Swissknife and other programs have verified its 4gb) but have not formatted it so I'm trying to figure out what the deal is. It's wierd because the first two times I formated it through XP it was fine but when I started using other tools BINGO. Now XP can't format at 4gb now

neomuzic,
As "bsaylor" pointed out anything above 2GB is a myth as far as I am concerned as I have seen no conclusive proof that they really exist.
If the seller has warned you not to format the player indicates to me that he is aware of the hack so I would not expect to much help there.
Most of these players run on a ATJ2085 chip which as "altean" pointed out in a post will only support a maximum 2GB flash memory according to the chips spec sheet.
You need to open your player and find the memory chip which will be the largest one on the board and note the serial number and brand and doing a google search with the info will find you your chips true specs.

Sorry there is no way to get it to a 4GB chip again as it was never that big to begin with.

I have no problem admitting if I'm wrong but I did have 4gb of music on it. The biggest chip on the backside facing the silver reads:

Samsung 607
K9WAG08U1M
PCB
FXA635PA

(A small label was put on the samsung with 6/06 checked off)

The only information I see on the board in white lettering:

B204v3-4

neomuzic, The Samsung K9WAG08U1M is a 2GB nand flash chip HERE unless you have 2 on your mainboard and I have seen boards with 2 slots but generally only one is ever in use. The 4GB iPod nano uses 2x2GB chips.
Hacked chips will appear to accept well over their true limit but generally any files added over their true limit will be corrupt and unplayable. Trying to access these files on your player will cause the player to reboot and in some cases they can not be deleted from the player or start appearing as garbled file names of no particular format. When copied back to the PC they do not play.

I did have 4gb but perhaps I didn't play that music that was beyond that threshold.

for viewing pleasure, just scanned it :

http://www.yourfilehost.com/media.php?cat=other&file=player.pdf

neomuzic, Wow scanning the player is a great idea I would not have thought of it, great clean image. Besides that looks exactly the same as my 2GB nano Clone. I would send the image to your seller with a please explain message. Get him to tell you how a 4GB player has only got a 2GB chip. Do the same to eBay.

neomuzic, Here is the dual chip board I mentioned VIEW

I scanned it at 1600dpi so you can zoom big time. 600dpi works but if your using a highres it would be to small and zooming would just blur.