Restore Zune 4.0’s “missing” features

Ah nice! But the sad part is if you’ve set US as your country for Live services, you won’t be able to sign in into Zune social unless the country setting on your Windows is also US, which if you set one doesn’t need the script. Having said that its always fun to learn such stuff :)

Nice tip. However the easy old way to set up Location to USA in Location and Language control panel works the same way :-)

Thanks Rafael, works great!!

When I try to sign in with my real Live ID it fails to download the ToS agreement and so cancels the sign-in…
Guess I’ll just have to be from the “US” again and use my proxy signup account.
Do share anything else about the zune software you find Rafael!

Cheers.

That is a perfect example of why I always keep the default settings (US) when installing Windows ;)
I know it sucks… but if you known your enemy you can workaround him!

There is one thing more frustrating: Not being able to buy a Zune in the first place. :)

(Without the hassle of importing it, worrying about what happens if it goes wrong or needs replacing, etc.)

Not that I’ll buy one until it’s at least 64gig, but if they released one that size in the UK they’d have my money moments later.

Microsoft don’t care about European people!

Oops, the kanye HTML tags around my last sentence got stripped. :-D

Amazing Raf :) Congrat an thx!!!

Actually, even in Canada, none of these features were available (and all of my regional settings are correct).

These overrides worked though, thanks :)

Nerd.

The reg file, and changing the location in the control panel, did the trick.

Thank you for this – it works excellently. I don’t get why they do this. I want to use Zune, but I can’t since I don’t live in the US. If they want to compete with iTunes, they had better look at their maps and discover that there IS a world outside North America…

Does this work with the Zune 3.0 software? I’m going to try it when I get home later. :D

Just wondering, but what do you make of the entries under “Radio” in that part of the registry. They’re definitely Internet Radio streams…. but uuh the Zune software can’t play radio streams can it? (Which leads me to ask whether you can actually disassemble radiopanel.uix and see if there’s some unfinished net radio stuff in there o.O)

Thank you for the registry edit, Rafael!

I have to say Zune is infinitely more enjoyable this way!

Thank you Raf. You’re restored the experience of the software to what I wanted. I was really angry about this stupid lockout.

Rafael, thankyou from a very grateful reader in Australia.

You are awesome! THANK YOU!!!

I’m not sure I understand… Can you then buy and download music even though you are outside US?

Well I’m not sure I done it the same way as you, but I did get the radio stuff to show up by simply doing this:

HKCU/Software/Microsot/Zune/Shell, and modifying the value of “StartupPage” to “Collection\Radio”

Jason, me and Rafael are working on a hack to have radio show up under collections. I have managed to get at least to stations to stream. Even though trying to run Radio is pretty pointless as of now, doing this might get the Zune team’s attention and have them release it in the next software update. If not, like you said we could hack it into working correctly. It’ll be hard but fun!

Thanks for this hack, works like a charm. I’m from Toronto, Canada BTW.

Here is a screen shot of it in action, there is another screen shot on my twitpic page with zune 4.0 gimped down without the zune marketplace :( . I’m happy now though. THANKS A MILLION!!!!!!!!

http://twitpic.com/ioidi

Works a treat, though still can’t sign in unless your locale is set to the US.

Any one know if it’s possible to SHIM it or similar instead of dropping your OS to the US locale?

Question is how is the location determined? The locale set in Windows or IP address? No need to apply if you’ve set the location to US right?

I think there’s two things:

1. If you don’t have a US based hotmail account you can’t do much.
2. If you do have a US based hotmail account and you’re location is not set to the US it won’t let you sign in, you can resolve this by setting your location to the US…so that suggests it’s not IP based. Don’t know how it’s detecting it though.

I am feeling very stupid, but how I get to registry in W7?

well, I’m gonna change the question…. how do I get to HKCU?

I don’t recall it being any different than in any other Windows since 3.1. Run regedit (or regedt32) and open the HKEY_CURRENT_USER tree.

Just to clear out things, in Canada we can buy a Zune, but we don’t have access to the marketplace. The hack is usefull for Canadian too !

You’re my new hero! Thank you so much for this. Now I can finally view the marketplace (and some other features) again.

As stated above, You’re my hero too Rafael!! I’ve moved to Japan and missed a lot of the features I had back in the States. (T-T)
Now they are back. I’m going to import a ZuneHD for sure now!!

…It’s funny how my Zune has the frequency change for Japan, but they don’t sell it here. (-.-;;

Thanks, Rafael, very nice but will this allow me to buy or rent videos outside of the US? Does it override the IP filtering on the server side?

im very happy wiht my life

amazing, thanks, even though i’m in canada, for some reason i was still blocked from the marketplace, thanks a ton for the reg entry, worked perfectly!!!!

Awesome, did not know there was that much options missing in my Zune software.
BTW MS is no longer selling Zunes in Canada anymore… jackasses. Was looking forward
to the Zune HD. Oh well there’s always eBay.