Remember a good few weeks back, when Zune 3.0 and 3.1 firmware’s were released, and they were noticeably buggy, but all was fine because the devices were still entirely functional. It seems however, that the 3.1 Firmware brought with it a game crushing bug: It stops Zune 30’s from loading up.

At exactly 12am PDT, all 30GB Zune models reset themselves, and failed to restart properly, instead going to the boot-up screen with the 100% loading bar…and freezing.

Its not entirely sure as to why this is happening, but its only affecting Zune 30’s with the latest 3.1 firmware it seems. Unfortunately, if this problem doesn’t fix itself, it may be that Microsoft will not be able to fix it with a mere firmware update, afterall Zune’s only connect to the PC when they’re fully turned on.

The only known way of fixing the Zune i to remove the battery (hence resetting the date, which many believe to be the problem).

Update 31 December 2008 22:31 GMT:Thank gawd, the Zune team have singled out the issue and have posted up a solution for us

"Ok all. the issue is a bug in the driver that controls the internal clock. turns out it does not like leap years. As the date flips to 09 the device should be back to normal. let the battery die the plug in and restart once we flip the date"

All is fine then it seems. Still, quite a scare a few people had there!

Check the rest of this here