Woke up this a.m. after leaving my Kindle in sleep mode with the wireless on. The Kindle was completely powered down. Didn't think much of it, thought maybe the battery had run down. Plugged it and it wouldn't start up. So I did a hard reset. It seemed to work so I left it to charge while I did my morning routine.

Just came back and the Kindle is dead. Tried another reset and it didn't work. Screen blinked a few times and nada. I have to wait until 6 am PST to call customer support.

I'm trying to remain neutral but I've been fortunate enough to never have an expensive device die so soon.

To your Dead KINDLE? I am intrigued...



Woke up this a.m. after leaving my Kindle in sleep mode with the wireless on. The Kindle was completely powered down. Didn't think much of it, thought maybe the battery had run down. Plugged it and it wouldn't start up. So I did a hard reset. It seemed to work so I left it to charge while I did my morning routine.

Just came back and the Kindle is dead. Tried another reset and it didn't work. Screen blinked a few times and nada. I have to wait until 6 am PST to call customer support.

I'm trying to remain neutral but I've been fortunate enough to never have an expensive device die so soon.

I'm trying to remain neutral but I've been fortunate enough to never have an expensive device die so soon.

In my personal experience with most electronic items they either die in the first month or they don't die for years. For example, my first DVD player, a $600 item back in the early days (1998), died after four days. It's replacement still works today.

The only thing out of the ordinary is that the SD card installed in the Kindle stopped working yesterday afternoon. Removed it, installed it in my Palm to see if it was readable and the card is bad. The bad SD card made my Palm go into a soft reboot loop. Turned off the Palm and removed the card. Installed a different SD card in the Kindle, the one I received with my Palm and it worked fine. I'm sure it's possible that the SD card was faulty and f'ed up my Kindle. I've had weird PC problems due to a bad USB cable so just about anything's likely. That's why I didn't try to read the dead SD card with my PC and external card reader.

I called customer support and the rep took a very detailed history of the problem. I'm supposed to hear from engineering support within 24 hours. Ugggg. The customer rep was very polite (and so was I) and said that the problem should be resolved (either a new Kindle or a fix for this one) within the week.

Did you try the little RESET pinhole in the back?

thanx for the update.. good luck with your Kindle...


Hope you will enjoy it.

I reset the Kindle several times using the pinhole. I did that before calling Amazon. The first time it came back for a very short time but died again. The second time the screen flickered a couple of times then nothing. The third, fourth, fifth, etc... nothing happened.

This morning I plugged the Kindle back into the charger and the little charge light lit up, an improvement over yesterday. Decided to let it charge completely before messing around with it. Came back about 30 minutes later and the Kindle was back up and working.

Amazon is going to download logs off my Kindle to see if they can figure out what happened.

I also ordered a spare battery yesterday because I was going to see if replacing this one would make a difference.

This morning I plugged the Kindle back into the charger and the little charge light lit up, an improvement over yesterday. Decided to let it charge completely before messing around with it. Came back about 30 minutes later and the Kindle was back up and working.

Amazon is going to download logs off my Kindle to see if they can figure out what happened.

I also ordered a spare battery yesterday because I was going to see if replacing this one would make a difference.

If they leave anything behind, post it here.

In my personal experience with most electronic items they either die in the first month or they don't die for years

That is for sure, When I equipped my home theater, I had both a Monster Power center die as well as a brand new JVC RS1 projector. Both were replaced and both have been fine since.

So far (2 days), my Kindle is fine.

I haven't replaced the SD card (I picked up a Toshiba 1GB yesterday) but that's next.

In my personal experience with most electronic items they either die in the first month or they don't die for years.

This is especially true in mobile devices. In an effort to make them smaller and smaller they actually end up stacking chips and doing other weird things on the board so you can end up with connections that are more prone to breakage. You get a lot more DOAs and nearly-DOA units (they work but somethings gotten too banged around so they fail quickly) from the abuse they take in transport with this type of product.

Interesting. Maybe it was so low on juice it couldn't light up the charging light. I've seen that happen to some DAPs (iPod, Zune). Eagerly awaiting the updates :)

When the Kindle went down the battery was showing 50%. Amazon's downloaded the logs and they are supposed to let me know the results. Now I'm trying to troubleshoot the kid's computer. It's an older Dell with some updated cards.

(First Post, Be Gentle)

Mine just died. Let me try to replace the SD card then mess with it again. If that does not help, I shall start a new self-pitying thread.

It's dead Jim!

I got my Kindle last night and it was "frozen" and unresponsive this morning after a night of charging. All manners of attempting to reset it were unsuccessful. While I did have the opportunity to use the Kindle it was awesome. Frankly though, I'm rather put out by the impending two week wait to get a replacement. Meanwhile the content I purchased (3 books) is useless and the 14 day trials will have just about run out.

Maybe if you point that out to Amazon's customer service, they'll give you another free trial when you get the replacement.

Maybe if you point that out to Amazon's customer service, they'll give you another free trial when you get the replacement.

I did when I spoke to him this morning. I will probably email them again about it as well.

If not for the dead issue, I was exceedingly happy with the Kindle. But after a long wait already, it's just frustrating to have such a small taste of Kindle goodness only to have it snatched right away from you again for another wait. :angry:

I'm sorry. The thought fills me with dread. I can't imagine losing it or having it break, at least not until they're back in stock again. I read a story the other day about some poor reporter that left theirs on a plane. I've been so paranoid about that when traveling. I'm always double-checking it's in my bag. I'm an addict.

I think the battery is a bit flaky. The last time I had problem with my Kindle I had to completely drain my battery and then recharge it. Last night we had a brownout. All of my electronic devices are hooked up to a UPS. The brownout bricked the UPS (it was fairly old and I was using it at max load) and also messed up my Kindle. I could not get the UPS to work, tried different cables, different computers and it wouldn't go into UPS mode. Had to hit reset to get the Kindle to come back up. I left it on overnight and the battery was drained this morning. I recharged the battery and all is good.

But I was pretty freaked for a few hours.

Alisa,

Amazon is going to send me a replacement. While they cannot restore the lost time of my trial subscriptions, they are giving me a "promo" credit of $30. Kudos to their customer support and maybe my Kindle downtime will be minimized.