Downgraded KPW1 software, lost collections

[wildflowertx]

Hi all. I searched to see if this had come up and couldn't find anything, but if I missed it, please point me in the right direction.

I used the directions in a couple of threads to downgrade my KPW1 software from 5.4.4.2 to 5.3.9 (thanks!!!) so I could get rid of the stupid updates to the Collections that showed both cloud and device entries (even though the cloud entries were greyed out, it was stupid having them show *at all*). The downgrade seemed to go just fine, and I have 5.3.9 successfully on my device now....except I seem to have lost Collections altogether!

I have the PW set to show by Collections on the far right sorting method, but all it shows is the 7 pages of uncategorized items and not the 4 or 5 (I forget which) pages of Collections before that which it should show (yeah, I have a lot of Collections ). I can at least still see all the books on my PW if I sort by Title or Author, just not within their Collections.

I can see the Collection names if I show by Cloud rather than Device, but that kind of defeats the purpose of just seeing what's on my Device, plus I can't actually *open* the Collections, just see the names; pressing on the names just brings up the option to edit the names or delete them.

I hoped maybe it would fix itself overnight, just needing some time to re-index, but no joy. Turning Wi-Fi on and syncing didn't help either (I'd put on the jailbreak and the "fake don't update this again" folder last night too so I wouldn't get the 5.4.4.2 software again).

Sorry to be so wordy, but wanted to try and give enough info about what I've done and how things look now in case someone can help. Any assistance would be appreciated! I like the Amazon Collections well enough -- and have used it extensively enough as well -- that I don't feel the need to try the Collections Manager hack but if I can't get this fixed I may have to.

Thanks in advance!

[NiLuJe]

Check with CM if it can see them, and try toggling the 'visible on the Homescreen' status of some of them. If CM doesn't see them, you're probably screwed (the DB format changed between the two versions, and while an upgrade is seamlessly handled by the firmware, a downgrade, not so much).

[wildflowertx]

Well shoot. I guess I'm screwed. Collections Manager doesn't show the Collections -- it clearly knows that books are IN collections, because it shows numbers in parentheses for those books that were already in one or more collections. But it doesn't show the actual collections.

Guess I'll read the CM thread to figure out how to use it, it doesn't look terribly intuitive offhand but I'm sure it's easier than it seems.

Thanks for answering, NiLuJe! I used your screensaver and fonts hacks going back several Kindles ago but hadn't kept up on the last couple of Kindles I've had. The Kindle world is far better with folks like you, ixtab, and the others I've seen mentioned as I've been meandering around in the various hacks threads, so thanks to you all!!

[barryem]

I wonder if the collections on the newer firmware are in some way modified, either in the Kindle or on Amazon's site. Have you tried creating a new collection to see if that works?

Barry

[NiLuJe]

@wildflowertx: I don't remember offhand through which way the "in n collections" count is handled, but that might be a hopeful sign. Check the screenshots in the first post, and experiment with the filtering/sorting settings in CM's menu.

@barryem has a point, my train of thought was to poke at the db simply through the 'shown in Home' flag, but creating a collection in CM certainly would be a hint too .

[wildflowertx]

I finally ended up just creating all new Collections -- named similar to but slightly different from the old ones -- because that's the only way I could figure out how to make it work. Behind the scenes, each book that was already in a collection (or more than one) now looks like it's in double the collections it was before -- I can see the old collections as well as the new collections *if and only if* I look at the collections by way of adding a book to a collection. Otherwise, the old ones don't show up anywhere that I can interact with them.

The new ones however do show up as expected, and seem to work the way they're supposed to on the 5.3.9 software (i.e., they don't show what's on both cloud and device, but just device...thank gawd).

It's not clean and a little clunky but the end result I guess works so yay for that. Thanks!!

[NiLuJe]

If you ever feel the need to clear up the mess, either do a factory reset, or, less annoying, but requiring a bit more elbow grease, clear the catalog db (/var/local/cc.db) over ssh w/ the framework down.