[Kindle Touch] 5.1 font issue

[enderwiggins]

Hi!

We just received today our brand new kindle touch from taobao (Chinese ebay!) and well, the kindle was in Chinese. Seems like it was running some kind of modified firmware (no previous experience with Kindle, so hard to tell if it was far from stock or not...)? Anyhow, it was possible to change the language to English.

That didn't turn out well, now everything is just squares or even nothing at all. As the vendor couldn't provide any information on what he/she did to the poor Kindle, I tried the following:

- Do a factory reset => no change
- Install official 5.1 update from Amazon website. It seems that went well... except that it was still only showing squares
- Get to the diags menu ... and did nothing Language is OK there
- Try to install the alternative freetypelib from this website, disregarding the warning that it wasn't ready for 5.1 (at this point, I am just assuming we are in 5.1, as I cannot read anything from any menu), but got an update error #3.

I have really no idea what to do. It's not bricked, but obviously, completely unusable.

Thanks for your help, anything would be greatly appreciated!

Guillaume

[yiming]

i have not localised my KT before, but found these instructions from Duokan forum on how to remove Chinese localisation:

1. place update_locale_settings_enabler_uninstall.bin under kindle touch root directory；
2. Menu->Setting->Update your kindle；
3. place update_5.0.3-20120222-zh_CN_uninstall.bin under kindle touch directory
4. repeat step 2

not sure if this will help. as i have no experience with localisation, pls proceed with caution.

the uninstallation files are attached.

[enderwiggins]

Yiming,

Thanks for your suggestion! Indeed, that's probably part of the modifications that were applied...

Unfortunately, there seems to be something wrong with the menu:



Of course, the fonts are wrong, but another thing: when I repush the menu button, it doesn't open a submenu (where I could "navigate" to update) ... I don't know if it's just a side effect of the font issue or something worse (modified firmware, broken firmware, etc...)

So... even if this BIN was the correct way to restore functionality, I do not know how to apply it.

Guillaume

[ixtab]

Regarding the localization, this is the correct procedure to remove chinese, and it should work on 5.1.0.

However, if you only see squares instead of the correct font, you may ALSO have some other modifications (fonthack) installed, or at least remnants of it. Do you see a "fonthack" directory when you plug the Kindle in via USB?

[enderwiggins]

ixtab,

No such folder.

I only see: audible (empty), tts (249 mb), documents (contain Kindle user guide and some dict) and music (empty).

I tried again to install the BIN. I don't see the menu, but from photos on google, I think I managed to press things in the correct order and it showed a sign that looked like a nice V (assuming it means success), then reboot, then back to exactly the same situation.

I also tried to reinstall Chinese, well, that didn't do anything either.

I did one more factory reset. Can't hurt, right? It seems that now I have a little more squares in the menu compared to before.

So... that's one step further, now I can actually install BINs and do factory resets!

[enderwiggins]

Just some update: now that I know how to install BIN blindly, I tried to re-install the 5.10 from amazon. And it worked. Maybe the other BINs did help, I don't know, if anyone ever has the same issues, I'd suggest to go through the same painful steps just in case

Oddly enough, it rebooted in Chinese! And then, from there, I just switched to English and so far, no issues.

Seems like we can start to enjoy our Kindle and do stuff like reading books. Like normal users. Weird start

[lukeroge]

Originally Posted by enderwiggins

Just some update: now that I know how to install BIN blindly, I tried to re-install the 5.10 from amazon. And it worked. Maybe the other BINs did help, I don't know, if anyone ever has the same issues, I'd suggest to go through the same painful steps just in case

Oddly enough, it rebooted in Chinese! And then, from there, I just switched to English and so far, no issues.

Seems like we can start to enjoy our Kindle and do stuff like reading books. Like normal users. Weird start

Glad you got it working