Installing Zune software without internet connection

vanDooren — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 05:42:00 GMT

Last week I bought myself a zune, and since my main computer during the day is my company laptop, I wanted to install it on that one. Unfortunately, going to zune.net didn;t help because the first thing the installer does is to check if Windows Update is enabled. And if it isn't, it aborts. Of course, if you don;t have an internet connection at all, it aborts as well.

My laptop is ruled by company policies, and security is not a laughing matter here. Regardless of what my opinions are, I am not going to tamper with that, since that would be very much a 'Bad Thing (tm)'.

After a lof of googling I discovered that a lot of people have this problem, and the folks at Zune.net seem to think that this situation needs no special attention. Luckily I found the solution on a zune forum. There are lot of alternate approches, but they require some degree of hacking with settings, which I do not want to do.

Download the client package which contains all the files, and not the setup shim you can find on Zune.net
Extract the files
Navigate to the packages folder in x86 folder.
Install wmfdist11-windowsxp-x86-enu.exe
Install windowsxp-kb915865-v11-x86-enu.exe
Install zune-x86.msi
Restart the computer
Connect your Zune and wait for the driver isntallation and device detection

For x64 the setup will be similar, but you won't need the kb patch. It shouldn't be too hard to figure out which files to install if you have an x64 system.

I have to admit I am a bit disappointed by Microsoft and the Zune folks for not explaining this in the FAQ on Zune.net or somewhere else where you can easily find it.

I am not the only one with a corporate laptop and a zune, and many people seem to have had this problem, judging by the number of hits I got.

It seems the Zune decision makers want to force people to be online.

Cluebat-man to the rescue : Zune

Installing Zune software without internet connection