Brand new Paperwhite, self reboots and white screens

[Quaxo76]

Hello,
I just received today my new Paperwhite. It came already linked to my account. The first thinig I did was to update the firmware. After the reboot, I started going through all the menu settings, to configure it to my tastes. And while browsing the menu, I had a couple of reboots. I thought "well, maybe the newly updated firmware needs to do some house-cleaning and needs to reboot". But it kept happening, both while browsing the menu and while downloading books.
Then the reader just locked, showing a white screen, with light on. If I pressed the power button, it would go to sleep showing the book cover, but after waking it, it would go straight back to white screen.
Rebooting it fixed the problem, but it happened again. Several times, and randomly.
I contacted the customer service, they instructed me to try a hard reset. I did that, then while testing it (by opening a - very long - book purchased from the store) it just rebooted and locked again while turning pages. So the hard reset did not fix it.
Since I'm leaving for my vacation in a few days, I asked for a replacement, and it's coming tomorrow.
But I'm wondering: I (and the customer service lady I spoke to) assumed a hardware fault. But could it have been a software issue, like a corrupted book? I have 4 sideloaded books. I would think that sideloaded books wouldn't affect the menu browsing (especially since I never opened them on this device). I guess I'll find out tomorrow, if the new device crashes too, then it has to be a book; but I was wondering if any of you had a similar issue, or has an idea what was going on in my device...
Thanks
Cristian

[Kusuri]

i doubt that its a software fault. i would too say its hardware. especially since you did a hard reset and it still happend. maybe the memory is damaged and because of this, it glitches around like that.

[monophoto]

Doesn't matter what the cause is - its a brand new device and it's under warranty. Send it back for a replacement.

[Quaxo76]

I sent it back (actually they sent me the new one, I still have to send the other back). The new one hasn't crashed yet, but I haven't loaded the "huge book" yet - and reading some reviews of that book, it appears that several users experienced crashes and reboots when reading that book. So that could be a cause, or at least a concomitant cause. I'll have to look into splitting it.
I'm sort of wary of downloading that book into the new device...

[Kusuri]

Originally Posted by Quaxo76

The new one hasn't crashed yet, but I haven't loaded the "huge book" yet - and reading some reviews of that book, it appears that several users experienced crashes and reboots when reading that book.

...how big is that book? like, how many pages? i read usually a lot, and never had issues with books. i had issues when i did read mangas who were big in the epub or mobi format, but thats because it had many images in it and it was trying to load that all into the ram. usually i could split the mangas though or just open again and it worked.

but even in cases where i had such issues, my kindle (PW4) only crashed to the home screen, not bugging out like you described.

[Quaxo76]

Originally Posted by Kusuri

...how big is that book? like, how many pages?

It's huge, it's a collection. It was very cheap and I had just gotten my first Kindle, and wanted to fill my library fast
It's almost 56000 pages:

https://www.amazon.it/gp/product/B07...w_myk_ro_title

[Quoth]

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B078J3SNYF

I bet shovelled free / PD texts from Gutenberg. An ebook omnibus that size is just stupid.

I'm thinking all those folk are sufficiently dead. I'd suspect the quality of formatting and even proofing if some are off archive dot org.

See www.gutenberg.org and install Calibre to clean up formatting and manage (smart quotes, indent instead of paragraph space etc).


Edit read the reviews! It's a stupid design of ebook.

[Kusuri]

Originally Posted by Quaxo76

It's almost 56000 pages[/url]

thats a bit.. extreme.. don't you think too?
i mean the biggest book i had read on my kindle was around 5000 pages long and had multiple books in it.

i mean sure it was / is cheap, but.. come on
56000 pages is just too much.. the kindle wasn't designed for something like that. just like it wasn't designed to open huge manga files it has to load into its ram.

also - are you sure it did index the book before you tried opening? i heard that if the kindle still tries to index a bigger book and you open it, that it can crash. and with 56000 pages.. indexing it should take long.

[Quaxo76]

Originally Posted by Kusuri

thats a bit.. extreme.. don't you think too?

Yes, it is extreme, I agree.

the kindle wasn't designed for something like that. just like it wasn't designed to open huge manga files it has to load into its ram.

And, you would be absolutely right, if not for the fact that Amazon themselves are selling that book, in their official store, and it's supposedly officially supported on all their devices.
Say I'm totally clueless about technology and buy a new device, then I go to the official store, buy an official book, and the player exhibits symptoms akin to a hardware failure. That's not good, and denotes lack of QA on their part. In this case, they had to replace my device (the customer support girl said something like "if a factory reset didn't fix it, then it's broken"). Too bad that probably I sent back a perfectly good device.

also - are you sure it did index the book before you tried opening? i heard that if the kindle still tries to index a bigger book and you open it, that it can crash. and with 56000 pages.. indexing it should take long.

Yes, I know about indexing. The first time I didn't let it finish. The second time, after a factory reset, I loaded only that book, and let it index it (took about 6 hours) but I still got the crashes.

I still wonder how can a large book make the device crash when I'm not reading or opening it, though.

Cristian

[Quoth]

Split it into separate ebooks using Calibre, or get better proofed PD from Gutenberg. The reviews suggest it's copy/pasted from Archive org. Gutenberg uses reasonable human proof readers.

The Kindle does various background things with ebooks. It's not a sane ebook.

Amazon only do certain kinds of automated checks. Report the book. It shouldn't be sold as a single omnibus.

[Kusuri]

Originally Posted by Quaxo76

if not for the fact that Amazon themselves are selling that book, in their official store, and it's supposedly officially supported on all their devices.

if you're a seller of a ebook, there is as far i know no human checking the ebook. there are just a few automated checks on the upload, and thats it. it's completly automated.. you upload the book file, write down the description etc.. and done. so only if there is a problem, a real human looks at it.

thats also why there are so many "trashy" books who are only maybe 10-15 pages long who get praised as "guides", but in reality someone paid a person on fiverr to write a few lines for 5-10$ and then he copy pasted that text into a book file and uploads it so people get scammed out of their money for complete trash. there are people who create fake amazon accounts, upload 1000s of ebooks who are all copy pasted together without any check and they then make money with that because "someone will buy it.. even if its complete trash". usually they price it cheap as hell so people buy it & won't complain after buying ("well it was only 2€..").

i bet your book is one of such an example where someone copy pasted a lot of things together and just uploaded it. i would report it to amazons support and see what they say to it. maybe on the store page if possible. because that many pages are not normal for a book.

[Gary_Berg]

I'd suggest removing the book from the Kindle and seeing if the device still crashes. If it does, it's probably hardware. If it doesn't crash,cits probably the book. You might reset the device to factory settings before testing.


Sent from my SM-T870 using Tapatalk

[DNSB]

I looked at that book on Amazon.ca and had to admire the Follow the author links. Though I'm not sure about most ereaders being able to handle a 128MB ebook. The reviews were rather helpful including such as:

Although the contents of the volume are worth having, the volume is so large that it repeatedly crashed the kindle. I finally gave up trying to read it.

Every time I try to open this my Kindle Paper white crashes and I have to reboot. I have yet to read any of the 560+ Detective Novels!!

This book file did not download correctly. It never completely downloaded. When almost completely downloaded my Kindle would spontaneously do a soft-reset and then begin to download again. I finally managed to stop the download and will try to return the book. At the same time I purchased and downloaded 3 other books so I really feel it was this file causing all the problems.

J'ai acheté cet ebook afin de ne pas avoir à rechercher séparément les différentes oeuvres tombées dans le domaine public. Malheureusement, cet ebook entraine des plantages à répétition de mon Kindle paperwhite, ce qui rend la lecture fastidieuse.

My main issue with the book is the typographical errors. One second you're reading 'car' and in another line it is 'are'. That is just a simple error but there are Numerous errors like this throughout the book and not all of them are simple, as if the translator had difficulty in decyphering the writing but you would think the editor would have caught this. Sometimes you have to read a sentence twice to catch what is being said. This may have been an issue with the original publishing, I am not sure. I had said I was going to compare my Holmes books with this ebook to see if I noticed any issues but I have not done this yet.

So, quaxo76, do not feel alone. Others have felt your pain over the years.

I purchased and downloaded the ebook using K4PC which opened it happily and the quality of the formatting is on the poor side and the iOS and Android Kindle apps were able to open it. I'm not sure I'm going to bother trying to put it on my PW4 given the number of complaints about rebooting.

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by Kusuri

thats a bit.. extreme.. don't you think too?
i mean the biggest book i had read on my kindle was around 5000 pages long and had multiple books in it.

i mean sure it was / is cheap, but.. come on
56000 pages is just too much.. the kindle wasn't designed for something like that. just like it wasn't designed to open huge manga files it has to load into its ram.

Hmm. Really? I have multiple crazy huge things on mine. None have page numbers, but max locs of 100,000+ are commonplace. One is 220105. All work fine on my Oasis 3, no sluggishness or anything

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by NullNix

...but max locs of 100,000+ are commonplace. ...

I doubt it. It's rare and stupid except maybe for a Bible, which indeed is technically an omnibus, though only some versions are 66 books. Many of them are badly formatted as ebooks.