Macworld - A plague of sorts has descended upon scads of Microsoft Corp.'s Zune media players. As of 2 a.m. local time, Zunes around the world have begun to freeze with full loading bars, resulting in completely unresponsive Zunes.

Posts at Gizmodo included the following:

"Right, so this is a weird one: we’re getting tons of reports -- tons -- about failing Zune 30s. Apparently, the players began freezing at about midnight last night, becoming totally unresponsive and practically useless."

"Wow, that’s a lot of -- wait, tons? There are tons of Zunes out there? Besides the tons that have been dumped in the giant landfills just outside of the Redmond campus?"

The glitch, dubbed “Z2K9” seems to mainly afflict 30GB Zunes and has spawned threads all along the watchtower Zune fan sites and other similar sites.

"If there is any karmic justice in this world, then all of my iPods will likely go drive off a cliff later today," wrote one poster. "Dare I ask if there are any Zune users out there who’ve been experiencing this horrendous event?"

At its official Zune site, Microsoft said it is working on a fix.

Computerworld's Eric Lai contributed to this report.

Related Blogs

John Traenkenschuh: My Zune is my life and I want it back NOW!

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols: Zune misery mystery solved

John Traenkenschuh: Happy New Year, for many but maybe not for 30Gig Zune Owners

Barbara Krasnoff: Zunes crash en masse

Reprinted with permission from

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