There is a problem with the Zune software in how it handles some albums. In particular compilation albums which contains songs from different artists. The problem is that the same album will appear many times in the album listing in the Zune software. This can be very annoying. To fix the problem of an album appearing multiple times in the Zune software perform the following steps:

1. Download and install the free MP3Tag program
2. Launch MP3Tag and navigate to the folder on the hard drive which contains your MP3 or .wma files.
3. Select all files in the album
4. Click the “Actions (Quick)” button
5. Select action “Format Value”
6. Select the value “BAND” in the top drop down box
7. In the bottom text box, specify: %album%
8. Click OK to commit the changes
9. Relaunch your Zune software and now you should only see one listing for your album

Windows Vista displays a boot loading splash screen with a small progress bar animation. Behinds the scenes drivers and configurations are being loaded. For troubleshooting purposes it is useful to remove the simple boot loading screen and display the drivers and configurations being loaded while Windows Vista starts up. Here is how you remove the simple boot loading screen and display the verbose boot loading screen:

1. Open run by pressing Window Key+r
2. Type “msconfig” without the double quotes and press ENTER.
3. Click on the boot tab and check the option “OS boot information“.
4. Click ok and apply

Microsoft Office Outlook Connector is a free program released by Microsoft which will allow you to access your Hotmail and Microsoft Office Live email accounts from within Outlook. Here is Microsoft’s official description of the application:

With Outlook Connector, you can use Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007 to access and manage your Windows Live Hotmail or Office Live Mail accounts, including e-mail messages and contacts for free! Calendar, tasks and notes synchronization are not available on all services. If your service offers calendar synchronization, tasks and notes will synchronize as well. See the feature list for your service for details.

Outlook Connector enables you to use your Live Hotmail accounts within Outlook:

• Read and send your Office Live Mail/Windows Live Hotmail e-mail messages.
• Manage your Live Mail Contacts.
• Use advanced options for blocking junk e-mail messages.
• Manage multiple e-mail accounts in one place.

With a paid subscription, Outlook Connector enables these additional features:

• Manage, share, and synchronize your Windows Live Calendar in Outlook.
• Access your Tasks and Notes.

You can download the application from Microsoft from this web page: Link

zAlternator allows you to sync your Zune with software other than the Zune software like Windows Media Player, iTunes, Winamp, or Media Monkey. You can read more about zAlternator at this link.

And here is a description of the application from it’s homepage:

“Finally, a release candidate of zAlternator is here! Yay! zAlternator is a program that will allow the Zune to be picked up and synced with programs other than the Zune program. It has been fully tested and proven to allow the Zune to be picked up and synced with the Zune program (duh), Windows Media Player 11, Winamp, and MediaMonkey. I have been unable to fully test the iTunes side of the program, but hopefully it should work.”