Please note:
a) I promise nothing and provide no warranty.
b) I am not a Microsoft employee, nor am I part of Zune support. Treat anything I say as if it came from the latest crazy homeless guy you saw.
c) My usage of Zune is purely for listening to albums (ripped from CD) and podcasts. I have never paid for content, thus have no idea if below will cause problems for those who have.
d) I had not upgraded the firmware on my Zune 4GB to the latest firmware. As such I have no idea if the below steps will work for those users who have upgraded the Zune hardware to the latest firmware.
Anyway, with all the Zune 4 client podcast issues, I didn't have much of a choice, so here is what I came up with...
1. Goto C:\Users\[YourUserName]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Zune (this is for Windows 7 - for other OSes search for a directory containing the file zunestore.sdf).
2. Copy every .sdf file from that directory to your desktop.
3. Ensure your Zune device is not connected to your PC.
4. Uninstall Zune 4.0 (from Control Panel). Note that on my PC it got to 100% and sat there forever. If it does that to you, goto the next step.
5. Install Zune 3.1. I had a copy on my PC from my previous install. This may help you find a copy -
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=zune+3.1+install+package&meta=&aq=f&oq=6. Goto the desktop and find the file called ZuneStore000200F0.sdf (or something similar) that you copied there in Step 2. There will be a number of files that end with sdf - you want the one with the longest name (like ZuneStore000200F0.sdf).
7. Copy this file back to C:\Users\[YourUserName]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Zune (it may already be there - Steps 1, 2, 6 and 7 are 'just in case').
8. Delete C:\Users\[YourUserName]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Zune\ZuneStore.sdf.
9. Rename the longest sdf filename (like ZuneStore000200F0.sdf) in C:\Users\[YourUserName]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Zune\ to C:\Users\[YourUserName]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Zune\ZuneStore.sdf.
10. Launch Zune 3.1 software.
11. I had to unsubscribe and resubscribe to the podcasts to get some of the logos to appear for them. Otherwise, it worked just fine.
