Tearing hair out with Wireless Reader

[richrock]

I bought a Wireless Kobo for my wife for Christmas, and seriously begin to wish I hadn't.

I have yet to install any ebooks without some form of difficulty. Calibre (0.8.36,.37 and .38) have failed to connect to the reader.

Calibre will fail with cannot read from device, various errors, the latest being:

calibre, version 0.8.38
ERROR: Error: Error communicating with device

database disk image is malformed

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\device.py", line 81, in run
  File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\device.py", line 338, in _books
  File "site-packages\calibre\devices\kobo\driver.py", line 336, in books
  File "site-packages\calibre\devices\kobo\driver.py", line 814, in sync_booklists
  File "site-packages\calibre\devices\kobo\driver.py", line 752, in update_device_database_collections
  File "site-packages\calibre\devices\kobo\driver.py", line 643, in reset_readstatus
DatabaseError: database disk image is malformed

I have the software version on the Kobo as 1.9.10 (r32284). My wife loves old children's ebooks, such as Little Women, etc, and many are free epubs available from this site and others like Gutenberg.

Ones I have installed either do not open or will cause the Kobo to restart. Books purchased from Kobo itself seem to randomly lock, causing me to have to sync the library, something the Kobo will not do unless it has line of sight to my wireless router.

It's infuriating, as even I (a techy-type web developer) find it difficult to fathom what I am supposed to do to reset the Kobo and it's sqlite database and get the bloomin' books working. To me this is a poor system and at the moment, would simply not recommend it to anyone.

Does anyone have any simple, practical solutions that may help before Kobo meets Wall?

Sorry for the rant, but this has been going on a month, with mixed results, thinking it works, but then decides not to, then works, then not....

[Cdesja5]

Try posting in the Calibre threads. Kovid Goyal (and other Calibre wizes) answer these types of questions very quickly.

[PeterT]

Originally Posted by Cdesja5

Try posting in the Calibre threads. Kovid Goyal (and other Calibre wizes) answer these types of questions very quickly.

Unfortunately I hate to say, the standard response from some of the Calibre developers is that the Kobo is a buggy device, and to ask for help here, not there.

Best advice IS to do a factory reset of the unit; this can be done through the menus (this IS a Touch, right?) Home | Settings | Device Info | Factory Reset

Also, the Touch is currently on firmware 1.9.16 and you should upgrade to that....

[kram]

I agree.

Factory reset. Upgrade to latest firmware. Copy your epubs directly to the Kobo. There's no need to use Calibre for this.