HELP! My ZuneHD's Touchscreen is Playing Up

[MotorMouth]

I've had a 64Gb ZuneHD for around 18 months and recently the touchscreen has started playing up. It appears not to work and then, all of a sudden, it executes all the touches at once, then goes crazy, jumping around from screen to screen and switching songs constantly. It first happened last week but after a few days of non-use I plugged it back into the dock and it seemed OK. But after 4 or 5 days it has gone crazy again and this time it doesn't look like its coming back.

I live in Australia so there is nowhere I can take it to get fixed. I can get a new touchscreen on eBay, with all the tools to open it up and fix it, but I don't want to waste $50 if it doesn't fix the problem.

This is a huge issue for me because I use my ZuneHD to listen to music at home 4 to 6 hours a day. I absolutely love it and there really isn't anything out there that could possibly replace it, but I could never justify paying up to $600 for another one if it is only going to last another 18 months. If anyone has any ideas, it will be greatly appreciated.

[CrowdAds]

[Marvin the Martian]

Have you tried a reset? I don't remember how it is done, but I know there is a way to do it. Beyond that, I have no idea.

[steinburger1109]

Along the same vein as Marv, have you turned it off and back on recently?

I can't really help if its a hardware problem, but if it's an issue with the firmware, I can help.

First, try shutting it off and turning it back on. Then, try recovery mode (holding the power and media buttons until instructions appear on screen. If that doesn't work, you can factory reset by holding all three buttons until you see instructions on the screen. THIS LAST OPTION ERASES ALL DATA ON THE DEVICE. EVERYTHING.

While there is a chance that your problem is somewhere in the hardware, this is how I fixed basically all problems I ever had with my Zune.

[MotorMouth]

I've tried doing this several times, as per the instructions in the Power User Guide, and it doesn't work. i.e. Holding the Media and Power buttons down, even for several minutes, only causes the Zune to restart. Then I noticed you said to hold all three buttons and that worked fine. So I've reinstalled the OS and now I am filling it back up.

I'm wondering if the problem might be related to the fact that the device was getting quite full, less than 5Gb left? I'll be a bit more discerning when I fill it back up today and see how we go.

Thanks for your help. I should have mentioned that I had already done the hard restart thing a few times but I didn't know about the Recovery Mode trick. Hopefully that will do it.

[MotorMouth]

Well, it was worth a try but it hasn't fixed the problem. As soon as I disconnected it from the PC it started playing up again. I'm glad I only put 100 albums onto it before I tried it out.