

Are all the MS Zunes dying? - bdfh42
http://gizmodo.com/5121311/30gb-zunes-failing-everywhere-all-at-once

======
ratsbane

      AT AN early morning hour
      On the last night of the year
      The Zune did sit and cower
      For it knew its end was near
    
      The Zune was cold and tired
      And although it was un-wired
      It had no friends to squirt
      No friends to be inspired
      And it feared the end would hurt
    
      But when the clock ticked "Two"
      A byte did move; a bit was flipped
      The program shuddered; then it tripped
      The old brown Zune was through
    
      Thirty gigabytes are soon made full
      Thirty gigabytes are what it's got
      Thirty gigabytes are quite a lot
      Thirty gigabytes of cotton wool
    
      The Zune has passed; it took a fall
      The music's stopped
      the stock has dropped
      It never "Played for sure" at all
    
      We wonder where is Balmer
      And imagine that he's ranting
      And raving at his crew
      They wish he would be calmer
      And stop his sweaty panting
      Oh look! He's thrown his shoe!

~~~
nickb

      12pm day before New Years
      My zune resets in the dark
      The loading bar
      Logo screen is freezing
      My music is sleeping
      I am numb
     
      Press up and back it isn't working
      It just lies there on the couch
      Microsoft went down to Charlotte
      They're not home to fix this bug
      And we wait
      For the next bugfix
      I'm feeling more alone
      Than I ever have before
     
      It's a brick and I'm drowning slowly
      My zune's a ghost and I'm headed nowhere
      It's a brick and I'm drowning slowly
     
      I call tech support at 12:30
      I pace around phone lines are busy
      Then I plug it in nothing happens
      This shitty gift that I got
      Can't you see
      It's not me you're dying for
      Now I'm feeling more alone
      Than I ever have before
     
      It's a brick and I'm drowning slowly
      My zune's a ghost and I'm headed nowhere
      It's a brick and I'm drowning slowly
     
      As Hours went by
      It showed that it was not fine
      They told me, "son, it's time to tell the truth"
     
      It broke down, and I broke down
      Cause I was tired of waiting
      Let the power drain
      For the moment we're alone
      Yeah Its alone
      I'm alone
      Now I know it
     
      It's a brick and I'm drowning slowly
      My zunes a ghost and I'm headed nowhere
      It's a brick and I'm drowning slowly
    
    

PS: huge apologies to Ben Folds for this irreverence.

~~~
sdurkin
Its so irreverent it hurts. Upvote for balls.

------
shizcakes
Thinking about this - I bet it's a Leap Year issue (some dumbass set a "days
in the year" upper bound at 365 days) and since it was first released in 2006,
this would be the first time it has occurred.

~~~
dangoldin
It's odd that it's only affecting the 30GB version though. I would expect the
software to be the same unless one version was just manufactured with
different software.

------
icey
This isn't great news for Microsoft. All of their "flagship" products have a
terrible reputation right now:

Vista - not worth the upgrade (I use Vista on one machine and don't really see
a big issue with it either way).

Xbox 360 - Red ring of death problems

Zune - Apparently hit by a date bug

~~~
jonursenbach
Does the 360 really have a terrible reputation right now? I rarely hear about
RRoD problems anymore in the sphere these days.

~~~
chaostheory
I still like the 360 (games) over the wii and ps3, but console itself is still
plagued with problems; most recently related to the latest xbox live update

MS still seems to care more about meeting the shipping date than it does about
quality

~~~
jonursenbach
If they cared about meeting the shipping date, Vista would have been way worse
than it is.

------
kzar
Microsoft's response is great:

Q: What fixes or patches are you putting in place to resolve this situation?
This situation should remedy itself over the next 24 hours as the time flips
to January 1st.

Q: What's the timeline on a fix? The issue Zune 30GB customers are
experiencing today will self resolve as time changes to January 1.

Q: Why did this occur at precisely 12:01 a.m. on December 31, 2008? There is a
bug in the internal clock driver causing the 30GB device to improperly handle
the last day of a leap year.

Q: What is Zune doing to fix this issue? The issue should resolve itself.

<http://gizmodo.com/5121822/official-fix-for-the-zune-30-fail>

------
allenbrunson
almost certainly some time-related software glitch. so microsoft will be able
to fix it with a patch, and everybody will be happy again.

this reminds me of the first year i was using windows 95. i just happened to
be awake one night at 2:00am when the daylight savings time change kicked in,
and the computer dutifully changed the time to 1:00am. cool, i thought. then,
an hour later, when it was 2:00am, once again it reset the clock to 1:00am.
and so on, and so on ...

microsoft issued a patch a few days later, and all was well.

------
bdfh42
More here - [http://gizmodo.com/5121311/reports-30gb-zunes-failing-
everyw...](http://gizmodo.com/5121311/reports-30gb-zunes-failing-everywhere-
all-at-once) not good news for Microsoft and even worse news for those that
have 30GB Zunes

------
mattmaroon
If a Zune dies in the forest, and nobody owns one, does Microsoft still hear
the bloggers complain?

~~~
raganwald
John Gruber wrote:

> Last night, between midnight and 2 am, all 30 GB Zunes in the world
> apparently broke.

I stared in wonder. They sold _thirty_ Zunes!? Then I figured it out. I need
more coffee.

~~~
mattmaroon
Ha, I'm pretty sure they sold at least 50.

------
paul9290
This title led me to believe this was about market-share not some publicity
glitch.

Well I think they are dying! I mean I can't make fart noises with it - MeH!

------
mynameishere
I'm surprised they've stuck with the tagline "Experience the Social".

~~~
axod
Having a buggy mp3 player that crashes at the same time for everyone brings
you all closer together. That's the social element. Then presumably you
discuss music, make friends etc while ms releases a patch.

~~~
gamache
Hey, do you see iPod owners all flocking to iPod forums at the same time?
Zune's like an mp3 player with a flash mob built right in!

~~~
angstrom
And everyone has a brick to throw...

------
bdfh42
Some guy on Reddit thinks he has a solution see
[http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/7mnmo/zune_fix_g...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/7mnmo/zune_fix_get_a_tiny_screwdriver/)

~~~
bdfh42
Turns out this may only be a temporary fix...

------
snprbob86
The solution is to "wait until tomorrow".

Quite embarrassing... but thankfully benign.

[http://zuneinsider.com/archive/2008/12/31/30gb-zune-
issues-o...](http://zuneinsider.com/archive/2008/12/31/30gb-zune-issues-
official-update.aspx)

------
jmtame
Does a blue screen accompany the freeze by any chance?

~~~
henning
No, just the way a beach ball doesn't show up on my iPod, which I have to
reset every few days.

~~~
jmtame
I should know better on a thread of mostly Zune users eh? ;) Truthfully, my
iPhone acts up sometimes. The browser randomly crashes, and I'll occasionally
need to reset when it freezes. It's nothing bad enough to cause me to want to
switch, but it does happen.

~~~
rbanffy
A thread full of Zune users? So that's why there are so few messages ;-)

Now, seriously, that's a sign of pretty bad QA to let the device almost brick
itself (there is the hard reset fix) because of a buggy firmware update.

------
jknight
mine is working great. i've never had an issue with it. best purchase i've
ever made from woot.com :D

------
vaksel
how appropriate...a message board about zunes, not working.

------
showerst
Both of them?!

------
vlad
What does this have to do with hacker news...

~~~
icey
You don't have any interest at all as to what would cause an entire product
line to fail essentially simultaneously?

~~~
vlad
If Google News and mainstream media cover it, as well as all sites that bash
Microsoft, is it really hacker news-worthy that a Microsoft product fails at
something?

