Yesterday, as Jim Sterling aptly put it, was the day the Zune stood still. Every 30 GB Zune owner with a clock reading the correct time and a recent firmware update experienced a weird glitch that kept their Zune frozen on the loading screen. It’s fixed. Everyone can once again “Join the Social” and enjoy their tunes.
A leap-year issue caused the crash, but as many have already found out, the internal clock switching to 2009 magically fixed the problem. If your Zune is still on the fritz, the Zune support Web site has your back. It is advising owners with extended problems to completely drain their battery and allow the device to die. After recharging, it should work just as it did December 30.
Microsoft took a few lumps from those privy to the Xbox 360 “Red Ring of Death” problems, but it looks like this problem worked itself out quite well. There weren’t any billion dollar recalls at least.