A Short & Sad Kindle Story

[Paul in Saudi]

Folks-

Amazon Kindle Support has not gotten back to me and I hope you can help. In a moment, I will tell you a long sad story, one full of red herrings. Before that let me tell you my symptom:

--I am on the sreen saver and no action I can take will make it do anything else.

OK. Got the device on 24 December. It worked fine. I like it. Took it on the redeye to Houston. Left it on (with Whispernet also on). It went blank. Once I got here in Mexico I plugged it in and it worked fine. I suspect I killed the battery by leaving the wireless on.

I am now in Mexico. I powered down and removed the SD card. It fired right back up.

I am now in the state I discribed above. I have the screen saver art and nothing I can do can change it. I have done everything but one thing. I have repeatedly:
-Turned off and on power (why does the screen saver not go away with no power?)
-Turned off and on the wireless.
-Turned both off and on.
-Pressed Alt + Caps + R (soft reset).
-Pressed Alt + Font Size.
-Done all these things when it is plugged in and when it is not.
-- I have NOT used the pinhole in the back. Yet.

Hoiw ought I to proceed?

[JSWolf]

Sounds like the battery is dead. Try charging it.

[Nate the great]

Did you charge the Kindle for at least 4 hours? Your post is not clear on this point.

[tsgreer]

And using the pinhole on the back is quick and easy. It's not like you'll lose any info or anything, I would try that. If all else fails, take the battery out, then put it back in and charge it up....

[Paul in Saudi]

I have charged it overnight. (Further I just checked; the hotel outlet is live, I am getting a yellow charging light.)

So that being said, would the assembled multitude propose I do the paperclip thingee?

[tsgreer]

Yes, please try the "paperclip in the pinhole" trick and let us know if it worked.

[Paul in Saudi]

Done and done. It is working fine again. (I wonder what that was all about? Do I need a battery?) I would caution any newbie reading this that the hard reset seemed to take forever. Don't lose heart.

Thank you all.

[tsgreer]

Yay! Glad it worked out for you.

[cfw123]

The straightened paperclip in the tiny hold under the back cover is the solution. I've had it happen to me, and that always works. You won't hurt the battery by leaving the wireless on, but you can leave it on always like I do by rescharging it every single night. I love to read in bed, so I keep my charger right beside my pillow. In fact the Kindle is the only kind of a "book" that I can really read in bed, since it takes just one hand to hold it and change pages, which I can't do with a regular book. Kindle says the battery will last longer if you recharge it frequently, rather than let it run dry, and then recharge. Incidentally, I reall love my Kindle -- it is much easier on one's eyes than a backlit reader, plus with the wireless turned off, a charge lasts more than a week. My laptop won't even last two hours.

[Kingston]

Mine has crashed like that about 5 times since I got it Nov 20. The last time it showed that all my Kindle memory books were 'erased' and the only content I had was on the SD card. If I took out the card there was nothing in the device, including the instruction manual and howdy letter from Bezos.

Doing the paperclip trick restored everything right away. I have taped 2 paperclips on the inside of my back cover and carry another 2 paperclips in the Kindle cover. The second and third times it did it I was in a hotel and luckily the front desk was open and had paper clips.

Seems our marvelous little thingy has a mischievous streak built in and likes to show us who's Boss from time to time.

Glad your restore worked! Scary ain't it.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Paul in Saudi

OK. Got the device on 24 December. It worked fine. I like it. Took it on the redeye to Houston. Left it on (with Whispernet also on). It went blank.

Hope you don't mean that you left the wireless on on board the aircraft. It's a cell phone, and it's a criminal offence to have it switched on on board an aircraft in flight, is it not?

[Paul in Saudi]

(If you don't tell the Feds, I won't. It was a redeye and I simply forgot.)

[KlondikeGeoff]

Originally Posted by Paul in Saudi

Done and done. It is working fine again. (I wonder what that was all about? Do I need a battery?) I would caution any newbie reading this that the hard reset seemed to take forever.

I had to do that now and then on my old Rocket eBook, and a few times on the Sony Reader. Always a good idea to try it when nothing else works. Just like having to reboot a computer when it freezes!

[ctitanic]

The hole in the back is what we called a soft reset. It reboots your Kindle. Palm and Pocket PC users knows about these little holes.

[ctitanic]

In fact, I would recommend that if you see anything wrong or taking too long in your kindle, just go a stick anything on that whole and reset it. That will save your battery from overloading.