How to Reboot, Reformat, and Restore your Zune device (Now Includes Zune HD)

So I have a lot of music from the Zune Pass but 70% of my music is CD's I've ripped to a hard drive. 11187 songs exactly if I'm not mistaken. Anyway, the problems started last night when I tried to sync my zune after downloading a few new albums and tracks from the marketplace. While it was syncing I'd get a message saying it wasn't adding stuff. So I'd click on the "not added" part to see what wasn't being added. These are some files/mp3's that I burned off of CD's. 1st off, why would it need to re-sync songs that were already on there? And 2nd, the songs play from the Zune software, so I know there's nothing wrong there. By this time I was on the phone with Zune support who told me to disconnect/reconnect, which I did. Then I started getting "Your zune is not responding." messages. Long story short, I've restarted, disconnected/reconnected the device, restarted the software, restarted my computer, tried every USB port I've got (other devices work just fine), reformatted the Zune, did the "initialize disk" thing, and restarted everything some more. I'm still getting "C00D124D" error codes with "Your zune is not responding" messages. The thing that is so aggravating is that it'll start to sync and actually got really far after initializing, well, not really very far at all. 3% = 330 songs give or take a few. But that's farther than it's gotten thus far. Now this thing WAS an awesome convenience. I have over 900 CD's, the actual CD's so this makes it very easy. Now it's starting to look more and more like a target for my sledgehammer. Are there any other steps beyond putting in a "repair" ticket since it's still under warranty?

Okay, pardon me, it stops @ 361 songs. 3% roughly of what I have, and constantly freezes right on the same song too. I've cleared the content multiple times, re-installed the firware 2x successfully, restarted the software, cleared settings as if it were IE. The only thing I haven't done is uninstalled it all together and re-installed the software. Reason I haven't done that yet is because we're talking a possible waste of time. This is definitely the most expensive POS i've ever owned and I find myself suddenly wishing I had gone with a few giant CD binders and just made the best of it.

 MetalGod83 wrote:

Okay, pardon me, it stops @ 361 songs. 3% roughly of what I have, and constantly freezes right on the same song too. I've cleared the content multiple times, re-installed the firware 2x successfully, restarted the software, cleared settings as if it were IE. The only thing I haven't done is uninstalled it all together and re-installed the software. Reason I haven't done that yet is because we're talking a possible waste of time. This is definitely the most expensive POS i've ever owned and I find myself suddenly wishing I had gone with a few giant CD binders and just made the best of it.

Always freezes on the same song...?  Wow.   That makes it sound like it may be related to file problem with that song.  Have you tried moving that song to another folder that is not monitored?  Does sync still stop at song 361 or does it get further along?

The song plays in the software. What do you mean a folder that isn't monitored?

And BTW, I ended up re-installing the software and trying that as well, didn't help. Still goes through 361 songs and then I get "Your zune device is not responding. I don't mistreat it, haven't dropped it or smashed it....yet, and for some reason it just won't move on. I'm thinking it's either the sync cable or a bad Zune.

You set the folders that Zune Software 'monitors' and syncs to your Zune device.  (If you didn't set them, they're still the default "My Music" folder.)
So, move the song that always fails out of that folder and put is somewhere like your desktop.  Then play your zune and see if the failure goes away- if it does then you know that song is corrupt.  If it doesn't, move it back and we'll think of the next step to try.

Okay, a couple of things and some questions. I was able to manually sync some individual songs and about 3 CD's successfully to where my Zune will actually play them. Now, I like the CD's and songs I have but why have an 80GB if I can't have my 50+ GB's of music back?

Anyway, I'll try to move the song I noticed it getting stuck on last and see what that's doing. I'm not sure if there's anything newer than Version 2.5 but the software seems to think my Zune is up to date, but I saw a flash that the device was not up to date. This was when I was having some problems with my network, but got connected and made a little more progress.

In the process of adding a few songs, and these are songs I had on there before but were not songs that were getting lost in this whole process, stuff that hadn't tried to sync after I wiped my Zune. I added the 1st CD out of a 2-disc set that I have with no problems. Went to add the 2nd one and got through to song 8, which is when it froze. Now the issue with this is that I had to disconnect and restart the Zune in order to get it to respond. In my Zune, the songs were there. In the software, they had the little icon next to the title indicating that they were synced. I tried to add song 9 and it timed out on me, gave me the not responding error and here I am again. Now, stuff I've downloaded, I can totally understand. But how does a file get corrupted if it's something that I ripped to my computer from CD? It plays in the software but not in my Zune. If it were corrupted, wouldn't it be inaccessible from anywhere?

And btw, I have set the folders to the ones that are designated for all my music.

Your last 2 posts are interesting and may become important but right now I don't know how to relate them to the experiment I proposed.  Can you complete that and report results here?

allright you guyzzz... I'm crossing my fingers!!!  It never fails - I get about 1,700 songs on my Zune - get the synch error - restart it and all my stuff is GONE!  Considering I have over 2,500 songs + movies to put back on.... it's getting really old!  I might be back to either kiss your post with a "thank you" or ask for help!

I almost gave up on my Zune, then I looked around the site and found this!

 

Thanks so much :)

I actually moved my entire collection to another computer (new folder's and everything) via an external hard drive. Reformatted and initialized the zune again, I have 4 whole CD's and 2 individual songs on there. Now, my only quarrel with all the "corrupted file" things would be that i still get that same error no matter what I try to do. I can pick one out of any of the songs I have and it will freeze. There were also times when I'd do individual songs, and it would say "Sync Complete" and "Just added" like it worked, so i think i'm in the clear right? NO! I'd try a whole CD and it would freeze at any random percentage. And then I'd get the same error message again. So i'd have to disconnect and restart, reconnect the device and it'd automatically try to sync the last CD i tried to, which would freeze it again. Same process but I decided to delete the "Sync group" for that CD and plug it back in so it wouldn't sync anything. I'd then look at the music that was SUPPOSED to be on my Zune, the songs that said "Sync complete" and "Just added" and of course, they weren't there. The other oddity of this thing is that I was listening to one of the single tracks I managed somehow to get on that thing, and then mid song (about 2:30 into a new Metallica song) it switched to a 2PAC song that I had not yet been able to sync to my Zune. That was odd. After deleting the song and redoing the sync process, I got my Metallica back but that was still just weird. I'm going to get up early and go exchange it b/c there is very little at this point that I think would actually work. The only other ideas I've had is to delete my whole collection and try to start over. Now, there are 2 issues with this. The 1st would be that I've spent hours downloading music and wouldn't want the stuff from my Zune pass  to be gone for good. That would be a migraine getting it back if it was gone. The other issue is that I've spent 2-3x as much time ripping my entire CD collection. If the music from my Zune pass would not be gone I'd do that as an absolute last resort but I really don't think it's that. I think this thing just decided that it didn't like me anymore and decided it had enough.

 skipdeez wrote:

I find that many sync problems can be fixed by simply rebooting the device, reformatting it, or reinitializing it. Here is a list of the device commands for both V1 and V2 devices. Try these actions first if you are having a problem with syncing to your Zune device.

Reboot: Press and hold the Back button (<-) + Up on the directional pad

Sleep Mode: Back + Down

To perform the following, reboot your device, and then when the screen goes black, hold the corresponding buttons until the process begins.  (“OK” refers to pressing the center of the D-Pad/Z-Pad.)

Clear Content (Format) – Clears all media content from the device, but leaves the firmware intact.
                V1 Devices (Zune 30): Press and hold Back + Right + OK
                V2 Devices (Zune 4/8 and 80): Press and hold Back + Play/Pause

Initialize Disk – Removes the content and the firmware.  Device will be inoperable until connected to a PC so new firmware can be installed.
                V1 Devices (Zune 30): Press and hold Back + Left + OK
                V2 Devices (Zune 4/8 and 80): Press and hold Back + OK + Play/Pause

How long do you have to hold down the buttons for the Format command? I tried doing that just now, and it won't reformat.