Help Needed

[sk8er_boi6000]

I own a Zune 80, which I purchased in January. On an outing recently, I dropped it (from about 3 feet or so), and when I restarted it, it just hung on a screen saying it was erasing all my media, and froze. I waited for the battery to die, and now when it starts up, it just boots to a screen saying Contact support.

I have tried the emergency reset, by pressing back + pad + play (after rebooting with back + up) and it freezes on the "Please Wait" screen again requiring me to drain the battery.

As the rest of the device appears to be working OK, I can only assume that something on my hard disk has been corrupted, probably on the firmware partition.

Rather than waste a really good device that I spend £160 on (as I in the UK returning it is out of the question), I am thinking of attempting to repair it myself.

The only option that I can think of is plugging the drive in via a Zif > IDE converter and chkdisking it to try and fix the errors, but if the worst comes to worst I have considered that I may need to actually erase the firmware partition and put all of the firmware files back on it, and if I have to buy a new hard disk, I face the same problem.

So my question is, how would I go about getting the firmware on the new drive if I purchase it? and if I need a disk image (like a ghost image, or an acronis image), or maybe even raw firmware files to put onto the boot partition how would I get them?

Also, if I do have to install a new HDD, how do I make the new partitions and ensure that they're bootable?.

Primarily, I am interested in getting an image of the boot partition of the 80, if anyone can help me I would be extremely grateful

-Thanks

[sk8er_boi6000]

I did not know that you had a support template, so here is the extra info you may need

VERSION OF ZUNE
======================
Zune version: Zune 80

VERSION OF ZUNE SOFTWARE/FIRMWARE
=====================================
Software and Firmware both 2.5

OPERATING SYSTEM
======================
OS: Vista X64 although this is a Zune issue, not a Windows issue.

PROBLEM DESCRIPTION
=======================
Read Above

THINGS ATTEMPTED SO FAR
===========================
Read Above... tried to clear and reinstall firmware and the device just freezes

HAVE YOU SEARCHED ONLINE/ZUNEBOARDS TO FIND A SOLUTION?
================================================== ========
Yes, the thread remained unanswered

HAVE YOU RECEIVED ANY ERROR MESSAGES?
========================================
The device just boots to a screen saying 4: Contact Support

[davetheant]

If you delete the registry entries on your USB port, you can access your Zune as a hard drive (through My Computer). You do not need to use the Zune software. Try defragging and chkdisking if you want to try it.

[sk8er_boi6000]

Whereabouts are they located? I dont want to delete stuff relevant to other USB devices i got installed

[davetheant]

I strongly suggest backing up your registry before this, but this is what I did:

Make sure your Zune is not plugged in and your Zune software isn't running. Run regedit.

Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\ControlSet001\Enum\USB\
Search for "PortableDeviceNameSpace". This should be contained in the Vid_####&Pid_####\########_-_########_-_########_-_########\Device Parameters within the above ...\USB\ The ##'s listed here will be numbers and letters specific to your Zune
Change the following values:
EnableLegacySupport to 1
PortableDeviceNameSpaceExcludeFromShell to 0
ShowInShell to 1
Plug in your Zune, and make sure the Zune Software starts up.
Hopefully at this point you can open up "My Computer" and browse your device, though it does NOT show up as a drive letter.

Hope that helps!

[sk8er_boi6000]

Unfortunately, didnt do anything, I already had that enabled anyway, but the problem is because the firmware on my device is corrupt preventing it from booting, it is not identifying itself to my PC and I get an error saying "The device attatched to this computer has malfunctioned, and Windows does not recognise it"

The problem is that I actually need direct access to the hard disk, as far as I can tell that hack only allows access to the virtual file system, not the actual hard disk of it, also I need to gain acccess to the firmware partition

[davetheant]

I don't know, sorry. I've heard of things that enable you to modify files on a hard drive without it being able to boot, but I've never seen one in action. Maybe you could find the firmware somehow on Google or something...

[sk8er_boi6000]

Been down that route, no luck unfortunately

[davetheant]

Sorry, I dont know then.