Copy data from and to a Microsoft Zune

Martin Brinkmann
Feb 28, 2007
Updated • May 28, 2013
Music and Video
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10

I do not own a Zune and will probably never own one but I know a few people who do own one, this article is for them. The reason why I probably never own one? Because Microsoft is making the music player only available in select countries, and mine is not one of them.

You can enable a hard drive mode in the Zune which is similar to the hard drive mode on Apple's iPods. All you need to do is change some registry keys in windows to enable the feature.

The benefit of enabling the hard drive mode is that the Zune will then be recognized like any other removable storage devices on the system making it a lot easier to copy data to and off of the media device. For that, you can use Windows Explorer or any other file manager installed on the system.

You need to perform the following operations to prepare your system for it:

  1. Press Windows + R, type regedit and hit the enter key afterwards.
  2. Go to the following Registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\ControlSet001\Enum\USB\.
  3. Search for PortableDeviceNameSpace and change the following registry keys to enable hard drive mode.
  4. EnableLegacySupport to 1.
  5. PortableDeviceNameSpaceExcludeFromShell to 0.
  6. ShowInShell to 1.

Plug in your Zune and make sure the Zune software starts. The Zune should now appear in My Computer as a drive letter. You can now transfer files from and to the Zune using Windows Explorer or any other file manager that you are working with.

That's excellent if you want to create backups of all data on the Zune for instance, or if you want to copy all the songs found on the Zune to a hard drive to have them available on the computer as well. You can for instance create a full backup of the Zune's hard drive whenever you connect it to your PC so that you can restore it at a later time.

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Comments

  1. Anonymous said on August 1, 2010 at 12:43 pm
    Reply

    Why not make use of the mplayer.conf?

  2. Mike J said on August 1, 2010 at 2:58 pm
    Reply

    Huh, I have never even seen this “font cache” pane; videos play at once for me, using VLC & XP SP3.

    1. Martin said on August 1, 2010 at 3:39 pm
      Reply

      Mike, in theory this should have only been displayed once to you, at the very first video that you played with VLC. The time this window is displayed depends largely on the number of fonts in your font directory.

      1. Mike J said on August 2, 2010 at 2:30 pm
        Reply

        huh, I lucked out for a change?? Amazing!!
        Apparently VLC keeps this info through version updates, but I didn’t see this message after a fresh OS install about 8 weeks ago, & a new VLC.

  3. myo said on August 1, 2010 at 5:52 pm
    Reply

    yes, yes, i have the same problem. sometimes, VLC crashes when it is playing .mov file.

  4. Kishore said on August 13, 2010 at 2:55 pm
    Reply

    Error:
    Buidling font Cache pop-up

    Solution:

    Open VLC player.

    On Menu Bar:

    Tools
    Preferences

    (at bottom – left side)
    Show settings — ALL

    Open: Video
    Click: Subtitles/OSD (This is now highlited, not opened)
    Text rendering module – change this to “Dummy font renderer function”

    Save
    Exit

    Re-open – done.
    Progam will no longer look outside self for fonts

    Source – WorthyTricks.co.cc

    1. Martin said on August 13, 2010 at 3:10 pm
      Reply

      Great tip, thanks a lot Kishore.

  5. javier said on August 14, 2010 at 1:50 pm
    Reply

    @Kishore, I’ll try your tips, but does this mean it will no longer show subtitles either?
    I do use subtitles, but the fontcache dialog box pops up (almost) everytime I play a file.

    Could this be related to the fonts I have installed? Or if I add/remove fonts to my system?

    I’ll try to do a fresh install also, if your tips does no work. I’ll post back here later…

    /thanks
    /j

  6. Kishore said on August 15, 2010 at 12:38 pm
    Reply

    @ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,

  7. Kishore said on August 15, 2010 at 12:39 pm
    Reply

    @ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,Dont worry, VLC is currently sorting out this issue and the next version will be out soon.

    No probs @ Martin !! Its my pleasure

  8. Ted said on October 22, 2010 at 3:57 am
    Reply

    Try running LC with administrator privileges. That seemed to fix it for me

  9. Evan said on December 8, 2013 at 1:48 am
    Reply

    I am using SMplayer 0.8.6 (64-bit) (Portable Edition) on Windows 7 x64. Even with the -nofontconfig parameter in place SMplayer still scans the fonts. Also, I have enabled normal subtitles and it is still scanning fonts before playing a video. Also, it does this every time the player opens a video after a system restart (only the fist video played).

  10. Mike Williams said on September 6, 2023 at 1:26 pm
    Reply

    Does that mean that only instrumental versions of songs will be available for non-paying users?

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