Kubrick: Live CD to debrick Kindle 3, 4, and Touch

[knc1]

Being able to see the imprint of someone's back pocket is a good indication that it is broken.

But hey, I had to ask.
Since e-ink displays retain the last image, they sometimes seem "frozen" when other things are the cause.

[hec_tor]

Hi all,
First of all, thank you very much for all the information shared in this forum. I have learned a lot but maybe not enough.
I think my Kindle 3 crashed somehow after installing some books in it. First, the dictionary stopped working. I tried to reset the unit with the "30 seconds" technique and the display turned completely blank. I have plugged the unit into a wall charger for at least the 20 hours suggested before using Kubrick (by the way, nice job!) to unbrick it.
One thing that I have noticed in my unit and that it is similar to some of the other cases in the forum is that while charging I only see the orange light for a few minutes or maybe the first hour. After that, it turns off but the green light never shows up! After the crash, I have not seen the green led working again.
I have tried Kubrick several times. None of them solved the problem. I usually can go through the first 2 steps with no issues. The 3rd one, when trying to flash the main partition, it has taken many different times to theoretically complete it although the longest time took around 1 hour. It seems that in all the cases it was not successful to complete the flashing properly.
I am unable to check if I have a battery problem or to determine the root cause of my bricked Kindle 3. Should my next step be to try to manually unbrick it? Should I follow the instructions as per https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/K3noobdebrickatk ? Any other suggestions?

Thanks in advance,

hec_tor

[knc1]

Originally Posted by hec_tor

- - - -
I am unable to check if I have a battery problem or to determine the root cause of my bricked Kindle 3. Should my next step be to try to manually unbrick it? Should I follow the instructions as per https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/K3noobdebrickatk ? Any other suggestions?

Thanks in advance,

hec_tor

*) Your description is a pretty good one of a worn out battery.
*) No - the Kubrick wizard has already tried that for you.
*) Replace worn out battery.

[hec_tor]

Hi knc1,

Thanks for your fast reply.

After charging again the K3 for a whole night I took the battery out and checked its voltage: it was almost 3.9V that seems to be quite a good value.
Then I have tried to use Kubrick again. In this case, the 3rd step took around 2 hours and 15 minutes and I could see how it slowly reached the 100% of the flashing progress. I thought the K3 would work again but my hopes lasted very little: after the "at least 30 seconds" reset the display remained completely blank.
I took out the battery again and the voltage I read was almost 3.7V...

Do you still think that the battery is the problem? If so, I will buy one and give it a try.

If not, are there any hopes that by using a serial to USB cable and following the steps I have seen in another thread I could solve the problem?

Thanks again,

hec_tor

P.S. Maybe I will not recover my Kindle 3 but I must recognize that I am learning a lot!

[knc1]

Hmm...

First things first -
Terminal voltage of a Li-Ion battery does not indicate **storage capacity**.
The battery in the Kindles has a terminal voltage of 4.2 volts when fully charged (and new).

Not being able to get it above 3.9 volts (assuming no measurement errors) is not a good sign.
That the terminal voltage dropped to 3.7 volts with only 2 hours of flash erase and re-programming is not a good sign.
The auto-shutoff point is somewhere around 3.6 volts.

Try another 1-day charge on an external charger, then try to re-boot it again (the hold more than 30 seconds thing).
That battery **might** have enough capacity to re-boot it.

But keep in mind - Kubrick does not touch the part of storage that is visible as FAT-32, USB storage (unless you told it to rebuild it).

So if there is anything found wrong with that file system that causes the K3 to start a filesystem check - that can be a very long process - perhaps longer than the battery will run the Kindle.
Also see: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...49&postcount=3

Do you still think that the battery is the problem? If so, I will buy one and give it a try.

Yes.

If not, are there any hopes that by using a serial to USB cable and following the steps I have seen in another thread I could solve the problem?

No.
Kubrick already did what can be done.

**UNLESS**:
Your K3 is 'stuck' in diagnostics mode.
Some of the very early K3 diagnostics mode firmware has problems -
problems where you can only 'get out' using the serial port (I have one of those).

But you should be seeing the diagnostics mode menu on the screen even in the above case.

- - - -

Is there any chance that there are two failures here?
Both a screen problem and a battery problem?

I.E: Have you ever seen the screen change since you started trying to un-brick it?

[hec_tor]

Hi knc1,

Thanks again for your comments. I still need some more help:

You say that I should expect a 4.2V reading when a battery is fully charged (and new). When looking for a new battery, I found this one (http://www.subtel.es/bateria-para-am...tel-911492.htm) that according to the specs in the picture says "Rating: 3.7V - 1900 mAh". Sorry if this is a silly question (I am pretty ignorant in everything but specially with "electronics"): Does it mean that this battery would not work?

I am also thinking in the possibility of using an external Power Supply set to 4.0 V and 100 mA to try to reboot the kindle and/or use again the Kubrick tool to try to resurrect it. If it reboots, it would be clear the I need a battery replacement. Would that work? Are the numbers for the voltage and power ok?

BTW: I tried to charge the battery again for a whole day to reboot the unit after the theoretical good completion of the Kubrick steps (more than 2 hours to reach the 100% and get the green flag) but my K3 is still dead.

Cheers,

hec_tor

[knc1]

The:

according to the specs in the picture says "Rating: 3.7V - 1900 mAh"

is probably taken from the label on the battery but that is the actually **rating** -
Li-Ion normally "over-charges" - which is when you would see the 4.2V actual measurement.

- - - -

There is a thread here about powering the K3 from a battery clip of external Li-Ion (or MH) batteries.
Ah, 3x1.2V cells in the clip.
The K3 does not use the battery ID leads (other models, other firmware, does use it).

[hec_tor]

Hi knc1,

I used an external DC Power Supply ans set the current to 100mA and voltage to 4.0V
I removed the battery and attached the corresponding cables to the proper connectors.
The usual power consumption once connected was 70mA and the voltage dropped a little bit to 3.8 to 3.9V
I was able to complete the Kubrick process apparently without any issues although the third step took "only" around 1.5 hours.
After resetting the unit the display continued to be completely blank.
When connecting the Kindle to a PC the message that I got was that it was unable to install the driver with a message "SE Blank Ringo"...
What should I do next? If the battery was the problem with the external power supply it should have been able to reboot unless there is something else... Any suggestions?

Thanks,

hec_tor

[knc1]

All of that sounds good - except for the error message and the fact that it **appears** not to be working.

**appears** -
Get rid of that Windows driver error message and you should be good to continue.
You should find a large volume of posts here in an advanced search of this forum about that Windows driver issue.

(or: get rid of Windows - but I understand that Bill G. has convinced a lot of people not to do that. )

[Dzunglv]

Hi, I really need help now, since reading all way I can but cannot figure out a solution.

Here is the situation:
My Kindle Touch got bricked 2 days ago. After the battery is drained because I leave it uncharged for 2 weeks. It always shows "Your Kindle needs Repair" screen. Even pressing power button for 20 seconds not show the boy under tree screen. Sometimes when I push the home button, a boy under tree appear, saying wait for your kindle to restart or something, after just a few second it flashes back to the "Your Kindle needs repair" screen.

When I try to charge my Kindle:
I plug the Kindle to wall charger, LED turns orange, after like 15 minutes, LED turns off. I plug it again, after a while, LED goes off again. I hear from Geekmaster thread that don't believe the LED so I leave it wall charged for 20 hours. When I came back, LED turning off and bricked condition still the same

When I try Kubrick Live CD:
I manage to go into USB downloader mode, Enter on "Next" to go to the next screen of "Now go into flashboot mode", but Wait for device.. appear forever in Red. I cannot pass that window. I have change several USB cords, change to several computers with different Windows OS, result still the same

When I try USB debricking for noobs:
I manage for my laptop to detect a USB/HID device as being instructed, but this USB/HID device just appear for less than 1 minute, than after that it automatically disappear. I change to other computers, try different USB ports. Still the same issues. Then I cannot go into Fastboot mode properly.

[knc1]

Replace the battery.

[qiaowen0]

Originally Posted by dovy

when i plug it in, i get orange led, but later it turns off. is that supposed to happen? reconnecting it turns led back on

My problems are the same with yours,exactly.
Have you solved it now after a new battery?

[mark29]

Hi there, long time lurker, first time poster.

I have a Kindle 4 NT and after a couple of times the book I was reading wasn't remembering it's place I realised something wasn't right, I tried deleting some books but it wouldn't connect to my computer anymore, I then tried to delete books on the device but that wouldn't succeed either. My next step was to try rebooting and it would then hang at the 20% progress with the tree.

Kubrick:

I tried running kubrick and got up until setting usb mode in diagnostics mode but when it rebooted into diagnostics mode from the previous step the screen looks like this and always has done since.



Any ideas?

[NiLuJe]

That's what the 'boy under the tree' loading background looks like in diags. Unless something wonky is happening, it should not hang there, and you should see the diags menu pop up after a while.

How does it show over USB? Have you tried hard-rebooting it?

[mark29]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

That's what the 'boy under the tree' loading background looks like in diags. Unless something wonky is happening, it should not hang there, and you should see the diags menu pop up after a while.

How does it show over USB? Have you tried hard-rebooting it?

Hi,

I tried a hard reboot, power button for 20 seconds, and upon releasing the power button the screen flashed blank and then went to this screen indefinitely.



Tried connecting to computer over USB and it doesn't show up still even in this "new" state.