The day the 30GB Zune stood still - news reports of this particular Zune model just freezing up has spread far and wide across the Internet, and it shows no sign of stopping, regardless of where you are in the world. It seems as though some sort of unidentified bug has simultaneously attacked this portable media player with no particular reason, preventing them from booting up and freezing halfway in the process. While this isn’t as serious compared to a situation where its supposed rival (”supposed” is used since the Zune never came near that category after its launch, with the iPod pulling way ahead to leave the Zune biting its dust) breaks down in a similar manner, it is still groundbreaking news as it involves Microsoft of all people.

Initially, there was no word from Microsoft concerning this negative phenomenon that’s sweeping across 30GB Zunes worldwide, but good thing the company has since acknowledged the problem on its Zune support website. Too bad they have yet to post a fix, and Microsoft has issued a statement mentioning “Customers with 30GB Zune devices may experience issues when booting their Zune hardware. We’re aware of the problem and are working to correct it. The Zune Social might be slow or inaccessible.”

That bit of news brings little comfort to the affected Zune owners, but in due time Microsoft has finally pinpointed the reason behind all the ruckus – it seems that the Zune froze due to a leap year. Just when we thought Y2K problems were to bring the world to a standstill back at the turn of December 31, 1999, here we have a Z2K problem. Microsoft’s latest statement, “A bug in the internal clock driver related to the way the device handles a leap year affected Zune users. That being the case, the issue should be resolved over the next 24 hours as the time change moves to January 1, 2009.” Phew! At least there won’t be dozens of bricked 30GB Zunes lying around as part of the aftermath.

Source: Wired