When trying to update the firmware on my 40GB Creative Zen Xtra, the update utility says "Your player is not connected, please connect your player" and the mp3 player is stuck in Recovery Mode. I did a little Googling and found that is a compatability issue with Windows Media Player 11 on XP and all versions of Vista.

To solve the issue, you need a Windows XP machine (or older) running WMP10. The process for downgrading WMP11 to WMP10 is as follows:

1. Click Start -> Run
2. In the Run dialog, type the following and press OK: %windir%\$NtUninstallwmp11$\spuninst\spuninst.exe
3. Follow the on-screen prompts until WMP11 has Uninstalled
4. Click Start -> Run
5. Type the following and press OK: appwiz.cpl
6. Find the "Windows Media format 11 Runtime" and Uninstall
7. Reboot the PC
8. Open up Windows Media Player and verify it's version 10. If you've got version 9, head to the Windows Media Player 10 download page. Install, reboot, and try updating your firmware once again.

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