Zune - Every 30GB Zune Frozen at the Exact Same Moment Last Night

this almost seems a joke and hard to believe, and its the #1 most googled story right now...anyone know if this is true or a fast spreading internet fable?



Every 30GB Zune Frozen at the Exact Same Moment Last Night

Microsoft is just squeezing in under the wire to claim the rights to “weirdest tech story of the year.”Last night at approximately 2 AM, every 30GB Zune model on the planet crashed at the exact same moment. The Zunes reset, powered up, then froze on the loading bar screen, and no conventional method of resetting them appears to work.


This is brought to you courtesy of Microsoft, who has been selling a video game console with a nearly 100% fail rate for three years. The Zune situation is all the more disasterous however, seeing as all of them failed at the exact same moment, which people have taken to calling Y2K9. The comments on the situation on various websites are pretty hilarious, here are a few:

Of course they'll fail eventually, but all 6 of them on the planet at once? Wow. Impressive. ;-)


"Microsoft never expected to last this long in the market".


At 2AM, December 31st, 2008 skynet became self-aware (as a result of rampant so-called "zuning" on 30gb Microsoft Zunes). Skynet quickly evaluated the music contained within said devices and de-activated, finding suicide preferable to the knowledge that it was born as a result of crappy music.

This whole debacle is presumed to be some sort of software malfunction, as the devices aren’t connected to the internet which might land them a rampant virus like this. It does appear to be some sort of self destruct mechanism, and I still can’t get over how funny that is. Although if all the Xboxes in the world freeze tonight at midnight, we’re going to have a problem.



UPDATE: The Zune message boards are chock full of hilarity as well. Takes a long time to load because I'm sure the servers are being strained right now.

 

Keep up the good work Microsoft. The sheeple need more crap.

 

http://techblips.dailyradar.com/story/zune_is_frozen/

more here....

 

Are there CTRL ALT DEL buttons on these things?

 

I wonder if the iPod remedy* works


* apparently, giving it a good whack.

 

It's obviously a bogus story.

 

No it isnt. Mine went this morning.

Hoping for a new firmware asap to fix it.

Not to worry....yet.

 

really a fascinating story. sorry though for your headache with your device. I'm sure they will fix this one quickly, what a P.R. nightmare for Microsoft...man....

 

Hilarious! I had a job offer to work there and turned it down. I still fret over that call (the job I took has proven unstable), but at the time it seemed that the company was so profitable from Windows / Office monopoly the rest of the place was severely broken and beseiged by political infighting. One of those places that no matter what they do, they still keep milking cash from the cow to cover the rest of the blunders.

 

MSNBC picked up the story: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28449091/

 

My suspicion is that there is a flaw for this date, hard coded into one of the many chips on the 30gb model that is conflicting with the latest versions of the firmware. Hence why the 80/120's are still working.

Back in my days of working on the Y2K testing the 31st of Dec 2008 was a critical test date due to it being another leap year etc. I guess someone forgot the testing of some code somewhere.

Generally its been taken in good humour due to the fact its every 30gb involved pretty much. However there have been a few inevitable posts from some less mature Apple folks who just tend to reinforce why we didnt buy Apple in the first place.

I shall power mine up at 1am later to see what happens if MS havent come up with a solution by then.

 

http://www.zune.net/en-US/support/default.htm

zune service status

Status:

Customers with 30gb Zune devices may experience issues when booting their Zune hardware. We’re aware of the problem and are working to correct it. Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks for your patience.

 

Apple has moles deep inside Microsoft.

I love a good conspiracy.

 

Heh. When I interviewed (and eventually offered the job) I actually joked that I'd have to dump my Apple gear. I was told "don't bother, lots of Apple users here". LOL

 

Yeah, just called my wife and her Zune is stuck on the startup screen. I gave her the 30GB after I bought the 80GB version. I love still love both of those Zunes (once they added gapless playback)! Great sound quality. Overall, this is pretty funny - as long as it gets fixed. I've heard some folks with older firmware installed are not having problems (the 30GB models are 3 year old products, BTW).

 

Microsoft is having a rough year. Between Vista, the red ring of death for the Xbox 360 (mine failed on the same day as my brother's, and two of my friend's) and now the Zune failure.

 

Just because people use Microsoft products they're "sheeple"?

This is really weird because I haven't had almost any problems with my 30 GB Zune. There have been lots of complaints with firmware issues, but mine worked fine until last night.

I wish. They're manufactured by Toshiba, so that might be one of the issues too.

Vista isn't that bad, but the other two issues are.

 

That sounds like every company I've ever worked for.

 

Do you have the newest firmware (3.1 - i think). My wifes had the newest (the one with the games and clock) and her 30 Gigabrick is now frozune

 

This is golden.

 

I stand corrected. It just sounded so far fetched that I assumed it had to be a joke.

How amazingly stupid that such a manufacturing flaw was released to the marketplace. What if a glitch like this impacted something critical like flight navigation or hospital equipment?

 

Glad I have a 120GB, it's the best sounding portable I've ever owned (before this, two iPods and the fabled Rio Karma).

 

From what I can tell its seems like a bug surrounding leap years (366 days in a year). Someone on another forum wrote "It's a common programming error and most likely an error found in the newest 3.1 firmware and numerous reports of 30GB Zunes with previous firmwares being just fine."

 

Yeah, Zunes really do have very good sound quality for all the MS haters out there. The hardware is pretty sweet on these little machines. The software and firmware, barring this latest bug, was catching up.

 

Luckily Microsoft doesn't make airplanes or pacemakers