Comments on: Users report 30GB Zunes seizing up; Microsoft IDs clock bug

Many users are reporting their Microsoft music players are rebooting then freezing up. Some dub the problem "Z2K."

[zeke225]

Microsoft keeps it's promises. my Zune now works. As mentioned in my previous comment I went out and got one today even knowing about this problem. At least Microsoft had the answer early in the day.

[AJ Pants]

hahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahhahahaha


that is all

[zeke225]

you noticed the irony of my statement.

[ldtiry]

When the Zune first came out, it was bashed because the wifi music sharing feature couldn't be used because there weren't any others available to share with. Now all of a sudden there's a glitch in the software and sudden the 1st Gen Zune is everywhere. Kinda strange that such an obscure device is suddenly a hot topic. My 2nd Gen 80 Gb Zune is fine and I wouldn't trade it for any Ipod even if you paid me. Anyways this just seems to be a temp glitch that will fix itself without any patches. I'm sure they will patch it anyways, but for right now no action needed.

[Dragoniies]

I feel asleep last night listening to Dragonforce on my Zune and when midnight hit, for some strange reason it started playing the soundtrack to Mama Mia!!!. Now I am gay, thanks Microsoft......

J/K I love my Zune and have had no problems with it.

[bcas400e]

Why are people surprised by this? It's Microsoft after all!

[NorthWakeDad]

"Hi, I'm an iPod."

"I'm a Zu- "

[Arnold Reinhold]

Apparently the Zune software goes into an endless loop on the 366th day of a leap year. Zunes should work fine today after a reboot. Many people believe Microsoft will fix the problem before December 31, 2012, the next time this will happen.

[timber2005]

If you read the FAQ on the support page, it says they will fix it with a firmware update before 2012.

[sdockendorf]

@cnet/Stephen:

First, the only Zunes that were affected were the 1st gen 30GB devices. I don't believe the 2nd-gen devices were affected. Your story has an image of the 2nd gen device at the top.

Second, your story states "Kitina Young, whose family owns four now-useless 30GB Zunes, isn't happy about Microsoft's response or the device's track record. "

That is not true - they are NOT useless. All you have to do is recharge and turn them back on after 7am EST and they will work again, as shown here - http://www.zune.net/en-us/support/zune30.htm

Don't get me wrong - I'm not suggesting that the software glitch is not a big deal, our devices should really never stop working. Personally, I don't like that the FAQ doesn't mention what the specific problem is either, but at least the issue was resolved within 2 days. The "track record" IMHO is way overblown, I've been a frequent user of Zune (both 1st gen 30 and 2nd gen 80) and have only experienced issues with wrong album images associated to songs, and that was fixed by a software update. I'll take the frequent updates, at least Microsoft is listening to their customers and working hard to improve and add value for their Zune customers.

[Monahan92]

I waited until the magic hour of 12 noon and plugged in my zune. After the charging period my zune successfully loaded and i could again listen to my music. Though i am still amazed at Microsoft for messing this up. In the year of 1999 people everywhere were worrying that every computer in the world wouldn't be able to change the year correctly and would crash and burn. Well here we are and that didn't happen...until now. Well it happened and now it's over and now Microsoft has 4 year (end of 2012) to figure it all out and offer all of us with the 30gb zune a fix to the dumbest mistake ever...oh wait no microsoft does that every day Example: Vista :) Good Luck Zune Lovers. I just hope we get a fix by then. Knowing Microsoft they might wait until the day before to get it out.

[ppgreat]

Et tu, Kay?

Amazing that after everything that happened several years ago, this was missed yet again. And the fix is to not have use of your device for at least 24 hours?

Gee, thanks again MS.

[koviea]

Followup: 30GB Zune now working ok. What a stupid and avoidable bug. I had to fix a bunch of critical software for the company that I was working for back in 1990 that only used 2 digits for the year and which stopped functioning properly on 1/1/90. You'd think that someone would learn a thing or two about dates and software by now. When you develop mass distribution or critical software you try to anticipate and compensate for as many potential issues as possible. Software that is date-dependant obviously needs to anticipate and compensate for potential date issues, which, unlike other potential issues such as driver conflicts, are literally the most predictable element of robust software design. As in 100% predictable. Date-related bugs are just about the dumbest kind, and totally avoidable with good software design.

And we're talking about the biggest software company in the world....

[Vegaman_Dan]

So... the devices are now all working again as promised by Microsoft. It's silly that it should have happened in the first place, but hardly the sort of thing you could have predicted either.

Did you know that the left rear tire will fall off on your 2005 Dodge Calibre at 179,233.4 miles, but only if you are going uphill in a light rain of small kittens with Motley Crue playing on the stereo? What, you didn't? Why didn't Dodge test for this obvious problem?

That's the sort of thing that you're looking at here. How would you ever expect a hardware device driver to be date specific on only one model of the Zune line? You can't test for everything.

The end result is that the Zune is working again and my 3rd gen Nano is still bricked and won't be working again. :/

[jamesmilt]

zunes are great products, i hadnt really heard anything bad about them so far. this is just one of those flukes that people will (unfortunetly) always remember when thinking about buying one. for those people i'd say dont let this be a problem its just a fluke and will probably never happen again.

[koviea]

"How would you ever expect a hardware device driver to be date specific on only one model of the Zune line?"

By, um, testing for such an obvious and predictable bug. It's not as if we can't predict dates for the next, oh, million or so years. We're not talking about some obscure bug that would only crop up under very rare condictions. The calendar turning to 12/31/08 wasn't exactly hard to predict.

"You can't test for everything."

Of course not. But you can and should test for expected conditions, like time moving forward.

[FargoUT]

LMAO! Time moving forward... :)

What doesn't make sense to me is why this only affected the 30GB versions of the device. Did this device have some fancy software that was different from the other versions? I don't own a Zune, so I don't know the differences between them, but it seems that the primary difference between a 30GB and a 120GB device would be a larger hard drive. What sort of software coding is going on here?

Very unusual, I have to say.

[akiroteteko]

Man not everybody is going to be perfect in this world.

By the way my 30gb zune froze like all the others but just waited let the battery drain all the way and plugged it in to recharge the battery after a day and now it works fine. I've had mine for about a year and a half and i love it. The way I see it is that if I could I would buy myself 120gb Zune, 32gb Ipod Touch, and still keep my 30gb zune cause i like em. I really dont see how apple products are better than MS products I mean really all products made in this world will never be made perfect for everyone all products at a point in time will fail.

Man people freak out to easy for little things like this. Cant people wait around 2 days without listening to music just use your computer for the time being.

[Zunigan3]

The zune 30 is a rebadged Toshiba Gigabeat S. Reports are that the Gigabeat also had the issue.