Creative Technology acknowledged this week that it shipped about 4,000 of its Zen Neon portable music players with an extra no one wanted: a ready-to-roll Windows worm.

The players, which were sent to Japan in an allotment during late July, are infected with the Wullik.b worm,a mass-mailed worm code that harks back to 2003. The Neon's file system includes an infected file, but according to Creative, the worm won't infect a connected PC unless the user browses the device's file list and clicks on the infected file.

Creative has posted a release on its Japanese site that lists the serial number range of the infected players -- 1230528000001 through 1230533001680 -- along with links to additional information.

Shipments of the Zen Neon 5GB model have been temporarily suspended while the company investigates the matter and checks for possible infections.

"We apologize the fact that very much annoyance was applied the customer and to the related everyone deeply," a Babel Fish-translated statement from the company read.