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Happy New Year from Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) (MSFT): Your Zune is dead.

Thousands of Microsoft's Zune media players - the software company's answer to Apple Inc. (AAPL) (AAPL)'s iPod - unexpectedly conked out Wednesday and showed users an error message, prompting references to "Y2K for Zunes." The problems appeared when people tried to start up their devices.

Frustrated users lit up Microsoft's online support forum for Zunes with more than 2,500 messages by Wednesday afternoon.

Late Wednesday, the Redmond, Wash.-based company said the outage affected only the 30-gigabyte Zune models and was caused by a problem with their internal clock. Microsoft expected the problem to clear up as the clocks ticked over to Jan. 1, though users will have to jump through some hoops to get their Zunes back to normal, including letting the batteries die down completely before the devices will restart successfully. lease:

The crash of so many Zunes at once drew comparisons to the Y2K programming problem that stoked fears about a widespread computer meltdown in 2000 when the machines ticked over to the new millennium.
http://apnews.excite.com/article/200812 ... VDP00.html

turns out it was a leap year programming bug....lol

Yup, mine locked up yesterday and it gave me an excuse to go buy a new 16Gb flash model.

Quicker (if more technically chellenging) hard reset option here, although I haven't tried it. I'll probably just let the battery run down: http://gizmodo.com/5121618/how-to-revive-dead-zunes-30s

I can also confirm it was NOT the last firmware update that did this because I never installed it. I have to sync via Wifi through a VM because the Zune Desktop does support WinXP64 and it's very difficult for me to physically connect the zune for a firmware update because of USB driver issues with XP64.

there will probably be a bunch for sale on ebay soon. a few years back I bought several of the Dell players. most only needed to be reset with a paperclip and then have the software reloaded. I still have one that I use.

Last I heard, they should be working again today. No reason to freak out or open your unit.

I let mine run down, waited until after the specifed time on 1/1/09, charged it back up and it's working fine. It's been confirmed to be a leap year issue. This will be fixed with a firmware upgrade (but since the next leap year is 4 years away, I guess there's no rush).

Official Microsoft Solution Page: http://www.zune.net/en-us/support/zune30.htm