I'd like to say that the VMusic2 is flawless, but that would be incorrect. I ordered 30 of them for a CalHauntS group buy and three of them (10%) were bad (two were completely dead and the third had no audio output). I own two myself and one of them completely died. I haven't found a solution to the bad ones other than return them to the seller.

One problem I've had several times, is that in trying to reflash the player using the ftrfb.ftd on a USB flash drive, the unit becomes unresponsive. The lights on the player and USB drive will flash but nothing else happens. I'm not sure what causes this, I can't get it to intentionally fail, it just does it on its own.

The way I've come up with to solve this problem (and I'm sure there are other methods) is by re-flashing the player from a computer running the Bootloader (ROM) program. It's not hard to do, but it requires a USB TTL cable from Vinculum (or other TTL level cable). Here are the steps involved:

• Attach the Vinculum USB cable (TTL-232R-3V3) to the player. Unfortunately, this cable comes with a connector with 0.1" spacing and the pins on the player are 2mm spacing. I took the pins out of the connector, wrapped them individually with heat shrink tubing and plugged them in to the VMusic2 directly. The black wire goes to the pin closest to the connector with the jumper, then the brown, red, orange, yellow and green wires, in that order.
• Download the current version of Bootloader (ROM) for the VMusic2.
• Use the Vinculum Firmware Customizer to set the proper baud and change to IPA mode.
• Pop open the VMusic2 case and move the jumper that's on the pins next to the USB connector to the rear pair of pins.
• Use the VPROG Re-Flash Utility (COM port version) to re-flash player.
• Move the jumper back to the forward pins

This should get everything back to square one and give you a working player.

You can view information about your player and send commands using the Hyperterminal program on a PC. Here's how:

• Hook up your player with the USB cable as described above.
• Open Hyperterminal on your PC (Start/Accessories/Communications).
• Give it a name, i.e. VMusic2. Select the COM port it's hooked to.
• Set the proper baud rate.
• Data bits: 8, parity: none, stop bits: 1, flow control: hardware, click OK.
• File/Properties/Settings: Emulation: VT100, ASCII Setup, check the boxes for Echo..., Append..., and Wrap...., click OK, OK.

You should now see the firmware version number, some other info and a D: prompt. You can type in "DIR" and it will show you the contents of your flash drive. You can play a track by typing in "VPF track name.mp3" and hit return. The other commands will work as well.

Here's a note from Michael R. regarding using large thumb drives:

"One issue I ran into last year ........ is that if the VMusic2 has old firmware, the firmware update cannot be performed from a larger thumb drive as it won’t be recognized."

"I tried from a 1gb, 2gb, 4gb and they all failed. I had to perform the firmware update from a smaller drive (128mb is what I used) prior to being able to use the larger drives. This is true for all four of my VMusic2 players."

I hope this helps. If I hear of other troubleshooting techniques or common problems, I'll post them here.