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General discussion

Zune black screen. Boots up loading bar but blank

Jul 22, 2009 3:43PM PDT

I have an 80 gig Zune that I got around Christmas time. It recently had a fall off of a shelf, but it may just be a coincidence. It only seems to boot up when it gets plugged in or reset, but it only gets so far. The Zune loading bar loads up, and then it sort of wipes away vertically and all that is left is a backlit blank black screen. I am really hoping that the fall is just a coincidence. It doesn't seem like the force of the fall would really break it.

Discussion is locked

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2 ideas (just links.)
Jul 22, 2009 9:28PM PDT
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How FAR of a fall was it?
Jul 23, 2009 12:48AM PDT

I get all sorts of vivid images when you put the words "Zune", "shelf" and "fall" together. What kind of surface did the poor Zune hit?

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3 ft onto a carpet in a case
Jul 23, 2009 5:56AM PDT

The shelf was only about 3 ft high, a desk-shelf kinda thing. It fell onto a carpet, not too soft but not all that hard. It was also in my leather case that came with the Joy Division set.

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Hate to say this, but...
Jul 23, 2009 3:50PM PDT

...3 feet is high enough to provide enough force to jar and/or damage something, particularly with hard drives. I've done it before, from only a couple of feet with an old hard drive I was moving to a new computer but instead was bumped off of a stool that I had set it down on onto the carpeted floor below.

If you're seeing the initial Zune logo and the loadup bar that portion of the boot is likely part of the firmware stored in ROM; that could explain why you're able to get the start of the bootup working. At some point the Zune tries to go to the hard drive for the rest of the boot process, and that's quite possibly when the black screen occurs.

All of this of course is only a guess; a qualified tech could tell you for sure. But if it's true then in all likelihood you'll need a new hard drive...and a reinstall of the Zune's OS.