so I was able to scrounge up another nano decoder today. it programed fine. work like a charm. no problem with any of the files that I tried in the previous night. And for the troublesome one. it has bad memory. It will be going off to ESU in Monitorsville tomorrow. Thank you everyone who offered suggestions. it helped me in rethinking and reframing of the problem. I have installed close to 430 ESU sound decoders over the years and this was the first one that was defective out of the chute.