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Old 12-01-2012, 09:22 AM   #1
Zolyx
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Question Trying to debrick, but connection keeps dropping

Hello all - I am very grateful to your site and community for providing a lot of really good information on Kindle unbricking and development. I found your site recently after a family Kindle Keyboard starting behaving strangely, and have been trying to fix it through the simple ATK guide for Windows.

First let me explain what I mean by "behaving strangely". The Kindle had been running absolutely fine with no problem until a week to ten days ago. But then, while reading a book, the screen would suddenly fade to white and become unresponsive. A random amount of time would pass, anything up to a few minutes to several hours, and the Kindle would reboot through the "tree with boy" screen, and arrive at a screen similar to Home with a message saying "Your Kindle is updated". It would then return to the book list.

This happened several times over the course of a week until finally it appeared to get stuck at about 1/3 through the boot screen and would go no further.

I believe that the battery has been extremely well charged during this time, both from a wall charger and through USB.

What I am trying to do now, as I mentioned above, is to use the unbricking guide to reflash the Kindle to version 3.0.2, assuming that somehow this problem was an automatic update that went wrong somehow (does Amazon stream Kindle firmware updates silently without you having to confirm you want them?). Before this attempt, the Kindle reported that it was on firmware version 3.4.

The problem I am having is that the Kindle download-mode connection through USB will drop for no obvious reason, and the amber power LED will go out. When this happens, any flash that is in progress will obviously fail. The furthest I have been able to get is just past 50% of the rootfs.bin flash.

I have tried flashing the Kindle on two separate computers, each running Windows XP SP3 32-bit with the ATK USB drivers installed correctly, and on each one the connection will randomly fail after a period of time.

Could anyone here advise me of what I might be doing wrong - I'm beginning to think that this is some kind of hardware fault and not actually a firmware problem at all. Would appreciate any suggestions. Thanks in advance!
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Old 12-01-2012, 09:37 AM   #2
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How old is this Kindle?
If you don't know, Amazon customer service can tell you based on the serial number.

The type of battery used in the Kindles loses storage capacity over time.
That is, it will still re-charge to the "normal" terminal voltage, it will just no longer hold as much charge as when it was new.
Just as if it was a much smaller capacity battery.
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Old 12-01-2012, 11:22 AM   #3
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The Kindle is approximately 18 months old. It was ordered brand new from Amazon for a UK Mother's Day gift last year (3rd April), but it has only been used regularly for around a year. I can't vouch for how often it has been charged, e.g. if it was only charged when the battery got low, or if it was frequently "topped up" which I understand isn't the best thing to do with the type of battery this Kindle model uses.

It hasn't displayed any low battery warning messages at any time while this recent problem was happening, but I guess that may not mean anything if it is indeed faulty.
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Old 12-01-2012, 11:31 AM   #4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Zolyx View Post
The Kindle is approximately 18 months old. It was ordered brand new from Amazon for a UK Mother's Day gift last year (3rd April), but it has only been used regularly for around a year. I can't vouch for how often it has been charged, e.g. if it was only charged when the battery got low, or if it was frequently "topped up" which I understand isn't the best thing to do with the type of battery this Kindle model uses.

It hasn't displayed any low battery warning messages at any time while this recent problem was happening, but I guess that may not mean anything if it is indeed faulty.
Only 18 months would be a rather short time, but not unknown.

Just keep in mind that this battery **might** be suffering from low capacity.
The monitoring in the Kindle only tests the terminal voltage even when the firmware is working.
When the firmware isn't working properly, all bets are off.
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Old 12-07-2012, 04:30 AM   #5
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Just to tie this topic up in case anyone else has the same problem, it did indeed turn out to be the battery. I swapped the battery with one from a slightly newer Kindle Keyboard and I was able to complete the reflash without problems. Once I find a replacement everything should be going well again.

Thanks for the replies, knc1.
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Old 12-07-2012, 07:00 AM   #6
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Thank you.
Some of my guesses are better than the others.
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Old 12-10-2012, 07:04 AM   #7
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Zolyx, im having the same issue however i haveto ask. how was averag eidle batterylife and Active use battery life on your old battery?

im having the same issue however my battery wa slasting about averageidle but wifi on active (the MP3 player app playing a Radio stream it died aftre 8HR's)
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