Thank you, pholy and taming!! You've just saved my kobo from the trash can. It was a re-gift from my frustrated--and technophobic--mom, but the duplicate text that appeared in every preloaded book since my first sync has been driving me crazy as well. It also refused to open any new free books I added. I was planning to do a factory reset, but didn't want to download and re-sync my entire library. I tried your 1.4 fix first, without success, but the 1.8 fix worked like a charm. Thank you, thank you, thank you for posting this
