What's this 'Too Many Devices' on PC ?

[abrogard]

I just tried to download one of my Kindle books and it said 'too many devices' - deregister or something...

What's all that about?

I'd apparently exceeded the number of devices I was allowed to download that book to. That one and some others. Maybe 10 or 20 out of the 300 I've got. The majority downloaded no problem.

But I don't actually have any Kindle devices at all.

But I've been using Kindle for PC since 2012.

I found the devices thing and I see I've got Kindle installed on 12 devices and Amazon on 1.

And I've got little or no idea what that actually means. I see the list goes back to 2012.

Looks to me like every time I've had a system disk crash and had to rebuild (relatively frequent, for me, with windows - four in the last couple of years for instance) then when I've installed Kindle again it has recorded a 'new device'.

Is that it? What's the point of that?

And I see that in 'content' the highest device count of any title seems to be 7 and there's only one of those.

And I see no indication anywhere of a 'device limit' mentioned with any title.

I find it all very puzzling and when I can't download (I'm just recovering from yet another system disk gone down) - annoying.

How'm I to understand all this? And deal with it?

p.s. If I want to deregister a device as it says, to enable me to download these volumes, how can I check that the titles listed for that device are still available for me? Or is that a given? Any/all titles listed for any device at all will always be present in your kindle listing?

[haertig]

You should be able to go to "Manage your Content and Devices", then "Devices", and delete all the Kindle for PC entries.

But first, I would dump Windows and upgrade to Linux. If you are having that many system crashes that require you to rebuild, well, I can't imagine anyone putting up with that mess. I knew Windows was bad, I haven't used it for many years, but I didn't think it was that bad. It sounds like you rebuild more frequently than I reboot. Wow.

[j.p.s]

If no device limit is listed on the book's product page at amazon it can be assumed to be 6.

Your book purchases are tied to your account, not to any device. It is the specific copy on the device that is tied to the device. You can safely deregister all the old kindle for PC instances and all books will still be in your account.

(I also agree that dumping windows for linux should be considered.)

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by haertig

But first, I would dump Windows and upgrade to Linux. If you are having that many system crashes that require you to rebuild, well, I can't imagine anyone putting up with that mess. I knew Windows was bad, I haven't used it for many years, but I didn't think it was that bad. It sounds like you rebuild more frequently than I reboot. Wow.

I'd guess it's not Windows, but something the OP is in the habit of doing, or not doing. I've been using Windows for over half of my life and never, ever have I had a system crash or had to reinstall Windows. Not once in 20 years.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by haertig

You should be able to go to "Manage your Content and Devices", then "Devices", and delete all the Kindle for PC entries.

But first, I would dump Windows and upgrade to Linux. If you are having that many system crashes that require you to rebuild, well, I can't imagine anyone putting up with that mess. I knew Windows was bad, I haven't used it for many years, but I didn't think it was that bad. It sounds like you rebuild more frequently than I reboot. Wow.

It's not Windows that's the problem. It's something wrong with the computer. One thing I would try is getting a new system hard drive in case the hard drive is not reliable.

Linux is not an answer to failing hardware or user error.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I'd guess it's not Windows, but something the OP is in the habit of doing, or not doing. I've been using Windows for over half of my life and never, ever have I had a system crash or had to reinstall Windows. Not once in 20 years.

You could be correct, and I'll concede that 20 years is a long time.

But not much more than 20 years ago windows had a bug that made it freeze hard 49.71 days after boot up regardless of what was or was not done during that time. linux had a very similar bug that made it also freeze hard after 497.1 days.

The linux bug was discovered and fixed before the windows bug was even discovered, partly because when it happened it was widely assumed it was caused by something someone did or didn't do, or any other commonplace windows crash. Also people were used to having to do frequent reboots and many organizations started scheduling mandatory reboots because of all the other problems.

Taking a page from the apple playbook, microsoft tried to define percentage uptime as 100.0*(actual uptime)/(elapsed time - scheduled downtime).

[DNSB]

Device limits depend on the content. I've seen one book that was limited to 2 devices while the default is 6 devices (number 7 will trigger the error). Music seems to use 10 devices as the default. In the book details, you'll see something like (I'm assuming that if this line doesn't show, the limit is the default of 6):

Simultaneous Device Usage: Up to 4 simultaneous devices, per publisher limits

If it's any consolation, when I updated to Windows 20 2004, my copy of Kindle for PC decided it was no longer registered. I registered it and then checked Manage Devices and Contents. I had 5 Kindle for PC devices, 3 Kindle for iOS devices and two Kindle for Android devices (not to mention the 4 Amazon Prime Video devices. I removed all the Kindle devices and re-registered my PC, iPhone and Android tablet. I left the Prime Video devices since entering user names and passwords on the not so smart TV or the Apple TV is a PITA.

I did wonder why after the 2004 update, Amazon pushed an update to Kindle for PC despite not having "Automatically install updates when they are available without asking me checked".

All this so I could read Og-Grim-Dog and the Dark Lord (Me Three #2).

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

It's not Windows that's the problem. It's something wrong with the computer. One thing I would try is getting a new system hard drive in case the hard drive is not reliable.

You don't know that for sure.

Linux is not an answer to failing hardware or user error.

But it can be the answer to a lot of problems.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

But it can be the answer to a lot of problems.

And the source of a lot of problems. Sorry but since the first time I booted Linux from 2 3.5" floppies, I have liked it but there ain't no panaceas for computer issues. Especially with the Tower of Babel situation that Linux currently "enjoys".

And that is without getting into the PEBKAC issues.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by DNSB

And the source of a lot of problems. Sorry but since the first time I booted Linux from 2 3.5" floppies, I have liked it but there ain't no panaceas for computer issues. Especially with the Tower of Babel situation that Linux currently "enjoys".

And that is without getting into the PEBKAC issues.

I did not claim it is a panacea or even a solution to the problem in the OP. I even described a serious linux bug in this very thread.

But I will state that I have been exclusively using linux at work and home for well over 20 years with the exception of a 1 year stint at work about 15 years ago that was all windows all the time. I put my heart, soul, and 1 year of my life into trying to make that work out. I was so very happy to escape.

[abrogard]

O.K. thank you everyone.

I will delete all registrations except no. 6 which it says is my default or something.

As to the Windows/Unix debate wouldn't it be lovely to get into that.. perennial favourite.

My two bob's worth: I was inducted to computing via DEC's Vax and I've been around a little bit since then, in the pc world. My eternal favourite remains DEC Vax and DCL.

Next came Unix. And C. And I greatly liked them but circumstances (governments all over the world cravenly wanting only IBM machines and IBM letting Bill corner the OS market and keep it with his 'no sales, only rent' trick ) forced me into the Windows world.

And right now I'm ready to come out of it. I'm writing this on a Linux Mint machine which I'm building up to become my main work platform.

Finally bit the bullet and made the choice.

But, yep, Windows ain't so bad. It's got lots of good. And I've done thousands of hours of good work on it. But there certainly might be something peculiar to my work habits or my gear that causes my hassles.

Because the main offender has always been my Asus H170 (all my computers are custom builds) which for a couple of years has been my 'best' (highest specs) machine.

It is that machine alone that has had four system crashes in the last couple of years. That's software: system crashes, not hardware, disk crashes. Though I have had them, too. Right now I"ve got a 6 month old Western Digital 2T ex system disk from that machine that now won't mount, can't be mounted.

It's hanging off this Linux Mint machine right now waiting for me to gather the expertise and tools to copy the partition off it so's I can try recover my data and turn the disk in to WD who'll replace it.

Somehow that H170 or my software set or work practices did it in. I feel.

I'm believing in black magic, maybe? Yep, maybe.

But we'll see. I'm off to Linux Mint on a different machine and we'll see how well I go.

When I get that drive sorted out, get my data if I can, I'll get a replacement from WD and I plan to put some LInux distro on it and put it back in the H170 running it. I'll have two LInux machines then and I'll try keep them in sync and we'll see if I can't build a better future...

Dreams of former glories... the software suite I had set up about three years ago... I had everything... ah well...

[ilovejedd]

Do you overclock by any chance? Windows is far from perfect but hardware issues can definitely cause system crashes and corruption.

With the HDD now unable to be mounted, the underlying issue could’ve been anything from power supply, motherboard or the disk itself.