This fixed my Fuze with similar issues.

My 1st Gen. Fuze was is dire straits, I was afraid It was trashed. No battery life as you described.

I discovered my Fuze "woke itself up" when off and then when into endless "reboot cycles" until the battery was dead all the time. It got so bad that it begain the rebooting cycles during playback, would not start with the on switch, not charging right, and other funky actions.

I got my Fuze fixed with a chkdisk /f (fix errors.) Found many disk block errors that had begun to interfere with functionality.

IO Bit has a freeware program I recommend called Total System Care. This contains a module called "Disk Doctor" a few clicks and the problem Fuze was fixed!

Afterwards, update your Fuze to the latest available firmware from Sanza.

My Fuze has been acting very normal since this fix!

Good luck with your Fuze!

OBTW:

Although it is said you can just unplug the USB cable on your Sanza products, I believe this likely caused the problems.

To avoid problems in the future, always use the windows "eject disk/usb device" before yanking your players cable.

Clipper