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In a story that is all over the net already, it appears a strange malady is hitting many if not all first generation Zune 30s. At some point on Dec 31 (no word if there is a specific time that is most common or if the time is even relevant), they are resetting and then freezing up with the progress bar stuck at full, becoming immediate bricks. The Zune cannot be hard reset from the Zunepad as it is locked up so you are left with a Zune logo glowing on a doorstop. There is a process for cracking it open and manually resetting it by breaking and restoring the connection to the battery that is making it’s way through the Zune fanboy forums, but just reading it made me wince and want to cross my legs. Some people are also saying letting the battery drain completely may also solve the problem but no confirmation on that.

No idea how or why this is happening…but it is now pretty clear that it may be one of the most comprehensive and widespread tech snafus ever.

For now, all those people affected can do is wait for MS to come up with a fix once the New Years holiday is passed. Needless to say, this is another blackeye for MS in the MP3 market and a massive headache for Microsoft’s skeleton support staff stuck covering the holiday. Sorry guys.

On the bright side (beyond the fact that my Zune 80 is running fine), for the first time in forever Zune has the top 4 Google search spots, with Zune frozen, reset Zune, Zune locked up and Zune troubleshooting.

Sigh.

(Thanks to Andrew Girdwood for the Google info)

Zealot (476 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

By day a department manager and writer for a major network device vendor...by night Zealot stalks the mean magnetic streets, striking fear into the hearts of bandwidth abusers and theme park mascots. Zealot has been involved with mobile devices for more than a decade now, starting off with dumb phones, moving to PDAs and then to smartphones, notebooks and netbooks with the odd PMP thrown in. Most of his mobile time currently is spent on a Treo Pro, Zune HD, Thinkpad T61, Gigabyte M912M or a Hackintoshed Compaq Mini 704. He proudly groks the Geek community and considers himself a Neo Maxi Zune Dweebie (thanks Will Wheaton!).