I have a kindle paperwhite 7th generation. A couple years old but was still running great until a recent update. I wish I knew which update it was but I didn't record it at the time. It was around the end of November/beginning of December 2017.
Anyways, after installing the update, the kindle rebooted and now will not go past boot-up screen (with the silhouette person reading under a tree). The backlight comes on and the screen just stays there responding to nothing. I can't turn it off either. I can hold the power button for 40 seconds and the screen will flash white and return to the same tree screen. I have completely drained the battery and rebooted several times to no avail. Amazon technical was of no use and suggested I buy a new device as my warranty was long past. I did buy a new one because I my commute is very sad without it but now I would like to see if I can still salvage the old one.
No computers will recognize the device. I have a chromebook with Crouton (Xenial) on it and I used dmesg in the terminal to see what was happening. Sadly, my technical savvy ends there.
If I leave the kindle unplugged and completely run out its battery, and then plug it into my computer it will start charging without turning on and this happens in dmesg:
[21448.145579] usb 2-1.3: new low-speed USB device number 9 using ehci-pci
[21448.235105] usb 2-1.3: New USB device found, idVendor=1949, idProduct=dead
[21448.235119] usb 2-1.3: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=1,
SerialNumber=0
[21448.235129] usb 2-1.3: Product: USB Charger
[21448.237966] input: USB Charger as
/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-1/2-1.3/2-1.3:1.0/input/input16
[21448.238442] hid-generic 0003:1949
EAD.0005: input,hidraw2: USB HID
v1.11 Device [USB Charger ] on usb-0000:00:1d.0-1.3/input0
[21449.759809] usb 2-1.3: USB disconnect, device number 9
Then after a little bit of charging something wakes up within the kindle. The screen changes to the usb charge symbol and this happens in dmesg:
[21719.929165] usb 2-1.3: new high-speed USB device number 10 using ehci-pci
[21720.020146] usb 2-1.3: New USB device found, idVendor=1949, idProduct=0004
[21720.020170] usb 2-1.3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2,
SerialNumber=3
[21720.020188] usb 2-1.3: Product: Amazon Kindle
[21720.020200] usb 2-1.3: Manufacturer: Amazon
[21720.020212] usb 2-1.3: SerialNumber: 90172202514508R4
[21720.025325] scsi7 : usb-storage 2-1.3:1.0
[21721.028996] scsi 7:0:0:0: Direct-Access Kindle Internal
Storage 0100 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
[21721.041734] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI removable disk
[22860.352727] [drm] Adding LVDS downclock mode
[22981.934109] usb 2-1.3: USB disconnect, device number 10
Then if I hold the power button down for 15 seconds the screen flashes and the backlight comes on. The screen flashes twice more, once staying white for about 5 full seconds, and then back to the same tree screen as before. Nothing happens in dmesg. I can even unplug the usb and plug it back in while the kindle is on and there is no register that I have done anything after I refresh dmesg multiple times.
Thanks for reading! Sorry if formatting is horrible :/ First poster here.