Jan 1, 2009 7:30 am US/Eastern
No Happy New Year For Zune MP3 Owners
'Frozen' Media Players Blamed On New Year's 'Leap Second'
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
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Owners of the 30GB Zune have been reporting "frozen" loading screens. (File)
AP
The Zunepocalypse. Zune leap year of doom. Z2K9.
The arrival of Jan. 1, 2009, left some owners of Microsoft's Zune music player singing the blues, minus the music, due to an apparent glitch in the devices' date programming.
Users of the 30GB Zune have been reporting "frozen" loading screens in which the device turns on but fails to proceed to a listing of the music files loaded onto the portable digital media player.
On the Zune support Web site, Microsoft acknowledged the problem was affecting the 2006 model Zune 30 and the issue was expected to be resolved by the weekend.
Online forums blamed the glitch on poor handling of the "leap second,"
the additional second of time added Wednesday to account for the tiny slowing of the Earth's rotation. The leap second has been used sporadically at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich since 1972, an adjustment that has kept Greenwich Mean Time the internationally agreed time standard.
This issue is related to a part that is only used in Zune 30 devices. Other models of the Zune welcomed 2009 normally, and other digital media players such as Apple's iPod were not affected.
Some online advice sites recommended ways users could
disassemble their Zune players to fix the problem, but Microsoft warns such efforts would void the warranty on the devices.
Microsoft has posted an official safe fix online.
A moderator for
zuneboards.com posted technical explanations for the glitch, and warned 2013 will revisit the problem.
"If Microsoft doesn't fix this part of the firmware," posted forum moderator itsnotabigtruck, "the whole thing will happen all over again in 4 more years. Hopefully by then a fix will be in place."
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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