First gen Zunes commit mass suicide
Well this is certainly one of the stranger stories of the year. I woke up this morning to sync my first gen Zune with my daily regiment of Podcasts and music, only to find that it was frozen at the boot screen. Odd enough, but not unheard of. I attempted the usual methods of resetting the device, only to find that I would end up back at the same boot screen again.
As I made a trip over to the official Zune forums to find a tip on how to fix this little issue, I found out that every single last original 30 gigabyte Zune had bricked themselves over the course of the night. Not 10% of them, not 50% of them, EVERY SINGLE LAST ONE THAT STILL FUNCTIONS.
This goes far beyond random failures, and into the land of class action lawsuit. Not sure what the issue is with these devices, but considering it’s firmware agnostic, and device specific, it must be something engrained in the hardware of these Zune 30s.
As of now, the Zune support lines are flooded with calls, and Microsoft has yet to release a statement on the matter. I’ll keep this post updated over the course of the day as the story develops. In the mean time check out the official Zune forums for more information.
December 31st, 2008 at 3:04 pm
There is a fix although many probably don’t want to do it.
All you have to do is disconnect the battery and reconnect it.
Pop off the bottom protector and unscrew.
Carefully pop off the back cover of the Zune
Looking at the back of the Zune right side up you’ll see on the right hand side a cable that runs to the bottom right. This is the batter cable. Push that tab up (NOT OFF) and pull that cable out. Put it right back in. Put everything back together and let ‘er restart. This will get your Zune up and running again. Good luck!
P.S. I still prefer Zune over my Ipod.