HELP: My K3 is getting slow

[Francesco]

Two days ago I went to Best Buy and played a little with the K3 they have on demo and realized how slow my own K3 has become in comparison.
I have around 450 documents in it and more than 1.5GB free.
I have an extension to send any article I find online to my Kindle, and so for the last two months I've been uploading and deleting dozens of single files, I don't know if that could be the reason.
Any ideas on how I could solve this?
Thanks!

[lmorchard]

Sounds likely, if it's indexing all those documents with a not-so-beefy processor. One way to find out: Back up all the documents to a laptop or a desktop, delete them, reboot the kindle, and see how slow it is.

[axcutul]

yeah, too many documents.

[Kenneth_irl]

450+ is quite a lot, I think. I don't have more than around 10-15 text files at anytime on my Kindle to keep it quick on its feet. Also, many files is confusing. I use my computer for storage. You could try and disable indexing to see if this is indeed the source of the slowdown, as seems to be. I don't see what else it might be at this moment. Also, note that I haven't tried to disable indexing myself. I don't know how indexing works on the Kindle, but I don't actually see why it should have to do the indexing more than once. If it doesn't have to do it more than once, as I believe, then I don't understand why it still takes up resources. I guess it's memory (system) related if that's the case.

One of the shortcomings of the Kindle is that it doesn't have an external card slot, imo.

[AnemicOak]

That really shouldn't be too many docs. I've had over 1,000 on mine at one time and it was fine (took them off because even with collections organizing sucked with that many).

I have heard of the indexing process getting "stuck" before and causing problems. I forgot how you check that, but I'm sure someone here will remember.

[pidgeon92]

The number of documents should not affect your Kindle's speed at all. More likely you have a file that isn't indexed, or a corrupt file.

At the very least, have you tried a restart?

[kranu]

Type in a gibberish line into search like 'dsfhbvx'

At the bottom of the search results, does it say something like:

Items not yet indexed (x)

If so, what is X?

[CWatkinsNash]

I have over 900 books on mine and the slowdown is barely noticeable, so I don't think that's it. However, all those docs you've been deleting probably left entries in the index folder and database, and as others have stated, you may also have one or more documents not indexing properly.

You can delete the index files by accessing the System folder. It's hidden by default, so you'll have to select to show hidden/system files and folders in Explorer if using Windows. Empty the Index folder (but don't delete the folder itself). Then plug your Kindle into a wall outlet and let it index overnight. (Indexing takes a lot of battery power.)

The next morning, use the method in kranu's post above to check for anything not indexed. Those will have to be taken off. If you have calibre, you can do a mobi-to-mobi conversion and then put them back - that usually fixes it. If the problem files are Amazon books, you can just redownload them from your archive.

[tomsem]

Kindle might be having a problem indexing one of your items. When that happens, indexing runs in the background more or less continuously without actually doing anything. This could happen, for example, if one of your books is corrupt, or if you copied it from a different Kindle or Kindle app. To index, the Kindle needs to be able to open the book, and it can only do that if it has the correct DRM key (or the book is DRM free).

To see if this is the problem, go to Home screen, type '.' (period) and then the Select or Enter button. This will display the Search Results screen, and it will either show you 'No Items' (which means it is done indexing) or 'Items to be indexed' (or something like that) in which case it is indexing stuff. Select the item and it will display the items that have not yet been indexed.

To fix it, you need to remove any item that can't be indexed (either because of file corruption or wrong DRM key). You can try deleting from Home screen but that might not work since the index routine will have the file open. The easiest way to proceed is to note the item it was trying to index, attach via USB to your computer, navigate to the documents folder on Kindle with file explorer/finder, and find and delete the item. Then unmount/eject Kindle and see if it finishes indexing (again by the '.'+enter method). Repeat if necessary.

I had a problem like this when I got my K3. I tried to move my samples from my K2 to the K3 (something I'd done before) but it turns out that does not work with Topaz format samples. I found most of them by trying to open them from Home menu (and getting an error message) but I think I finally found the last one by checking the index queue, which had gotten stuck.

[Francesco]

Hey all,
thanks a lot for your replies (particularly pidgeon92) My problem is solved!!!
It was a corrupt file that wouldn't get indexed, now everything is back to normal. I feel like you guys helped me get a splinter out of the sole of my foot!!!

[terencek]

Just as a general rule, it's not actually correct as someone has said above, that the number of documents doesn't slow your Kindle down. I have about 1,500 books on mine now, and the more I put on (I've used about half the available capacity) the slower it becomes -- BUT ONLY when calling up the Home page, to be specific. Otherwise there's no noticeable change.

Calling up my Home page can now take up to half a minute, from just seconds when almost empty. At this rate I suspect actually filling up the entire 3GB of capacity would slow the Home page to a treacly crawl.... This experience has been borne out by others on this forum many times.

[Tome Keeper]

I had nearly filled my Kindle up and didn't notice any slowness expect when using the search function. The search became very slow and last time I used it the Kindle froze and even using a hard-shutdown wouldn't bring it back for at least 5 minutes, when it displayed an error saying I had run out of memory. Since then I have deleted all my books and now have a more manageable 200 loaded on it.

[Desertway]

Originally Posted by terencek

Just as a general rule, it's not actually correct as someone has said above, that the number of documents doesn't slow your Kindle down. I have about 1,500 books on mine now, and the more I put on (I've used about half the available capacity) the slower it becomes -- BUT ONLY when calling up the Home page, to be specific. Otherwise there's no noticeable change.

Calling up my Home page can now take up to half a minute, from just seconds when almost empty. At this rate I suspect actually filling up the entire 3GB of capacity would slow the Home page to a treacly crawl.... This experience has been borne out by others on this forum many times.

My experience is exactly the same. I have just under a thousand books. The reading experience is not hindered at all, but navigating to the home page is very, very, slow. And yes, I have checked for any document stuck in indexing. It's not a big deal.