cmejia3, hopefully it is somewhat of a comfort to you that you are NOT the only one with this problem. I too have just purchased (last week) the Axim X5 300MHz unit and have had the EXACT same problem playing mp3's from my SanDisk128mb CF Card. I've posted this problem to the Yahoo!Groups "Axim" list earlier today (a VERY helpful bunch of people over there, over 2000 members apparently) and i've already received 3 responses. So far, here are the two useful suggestions:
(1)
"have you tested the MP3's on another CF card? Maybe the card is not working properly?"
(2)
"I seem to remember hearing rumours about high bitrate MP3 files, WMP, and PocketPCs. I believe that this was one of the items fixed in the new PPC 2003 release with WMP 9."
i'm going to test out my mp3s on another CF Card tonight (can't activesync here at work, curses!) and see if it's my card. But I know the upgrade to PPC 2003 is FREE for you and I since we only recently purchased our Axims (yay!) so maybe that will help the problem? Finally, i'm am going to try out this mp3 player:
http://myladydaemon.tk/winamp/winampaq.exe
and see if that helps. Somehow i don't think it's the players, but one never knows right? Please keep in touch, if you solve the problem be sure to post your solution. I will do the same. And if there's someone else out there who has already been thru this fiasco, PLEASE post your idea! I find it hard to believe someone somewhere hasn't ironed this issue out yet.
Good luck!
Noah