Happy New Year: Microsoft Fixes Zune Bug

After its New Years Eve power outage, it seems that Microsoft has fixed the bug that caused the owners of its 30GB Zune portable music player to unexpectedly lose functionality. The glitch caused the music player to freeze up, leaving its owners out in the cold and without access to their digital music for the holiday.

On Thursday, Microsoft posted a note to its Web site that read, "You can go back to using your Zune!" The missive from the company had instructions for how its users could fix the Z2K9 bug by resetting their players.

The problem stemmed from a bug that gave the Zune music player difficulty when switching over from this past leap year into 2009. Dj' vu all over again, isn't it?

The fix for the problem, it turns out, is pretty simple. "Wait until the battery is empty and the screen goes black," the company said. After that the devices simply had to be powered back up after 7 a.m. on New Year's Day. "No other action is required."

Of course there's still one caveat. Customers with music containing DRM (digital rights management) will have to take one additional step, because the fix made DRM coded music unplayable. Customers who wanted to retain and replay that music were forced to resynch their Zune with their computer, which Microsoft said will fix the problem.