Only hours after owners of Zune 30GB players started to report that their Zune was freezing on them on the last day of the year, Microsoft has posted an update and resolution to the issue.
Early this morning we were alerted by our customers that there was a widespread issue affecting our 2006 model Zune 30GB devices (a large number of which are still actively being used). The technical team jumped on the problem immediately and isolated the issue: a bug in the internal clock driver related to the way the device handles a leap year.
Microsoft expects that the Zune 30GB’s internal clock will reset itself today. They suggest that you let the battery fully run out of power, then recharge it and turn it back on after noon GMT on January 1, 2009. Zune subscribers will likely need to resync their devices as well to refresh the rights to the downloaded content on the Zune.
Microsoft has also promised a firmware update before the next leap year in 2012!
No other Zune models are affected.