Troubleshooting PW2 and battery

[BookCat]

I recently bought a PW2 and I'm having problems with the battery, or the indicator, I'm not sure which.

After charging the reader using http://www.amazon.co.uk/Main-Charger...+mains+charger
I didn't use the reader for about 12 hours; when I switched it on, the battery indicator showed the battery as half empty.

The battery seems to drain very fast even when the reader isn't in use. My old Sony holds a charge for longer and has far more books on it! Is this just an indicator problem? Am I charging correctly? Or have I got a duff battery?

[eschwartz]

I assume you charged it and waited for the light to switch to green, to indicate done charging.

Assuming the WiFi is off, then yes, there seems to be something very wrong. For that matter, even if the WiFi is on, this seems suspicious.

Far more likely I'd think that the battery is physically messed up.

You should send it in to Amazon and ask for a new one.

[BookCat]

It's permanently in airoplane mode, so the wifi is off.

Yes, I do wait for the light to switch to green. A couple of nights ago I gave it an over-night charge, and it's still having problems.

I'll contact Amazon. Thanks for the quick response.

One thing I did wonder was whether this was a problem with the battery indicator. I know when the 505 was new that it needed several battery cycles (draining and charging) for the indicator to be reliable. But that was a long time ago, ereader-wise.

[sirmaru]

Some battery METERS need to be run down to zero to properly calibrate them when first purchased. The battery may be fine.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by sirmaru

Some battery METERS need to be run down to zero to properly calibrate them when first purchased. The battery may be fine.

Not any Kindle I or anyone I know bought.

@Bookcat
In any event, by the time you get around to sending it, it should already be *dead* at the current rate, that will tell you if it is truly malfunctioning or if the meter is somehow off, for whatever reason.

[dordale]

Did you load a lot of books on it at once? Your PW might be indexing the files you've loaded and this can drain the battery. If you added a lot of files at once, it might take the Kindle quite a while (several hours) to perform the initial indexing of the files. Battery usage should go to a more reasonable rate once the indexing is done.

To see if your PW is still indexing form the home screen, do an "all text" search for some nonsense characters (like xahrheawifj)--something that the PW won't find on your PW. If there are still items indexing you'll get a message showing how many items are left to index.

I know some folks have had problems with some files either taking a long time to index or files that for some reason the PW can't index at all. My understanding is that if this happens, the PW will continue to try to index the files continuing to drain battery life.

Best practice is to load a few files (10-20) at a time. (Of course that's not what I do!) LOL

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by dordale

Did you load a lot of books on it at once? Your PW might be indexing the files you've loaded and this can drain the battery. If you added a lot of files at once, it might take the Kindle quite a while (several hours) to perform the initial indexing of the files. Battery usage should go to a more reasonable rate once the indexing is done.

To see if your PW is still indexing form the home screen, do an "all text" search for some nonsense characters (like xahrheawifj)--something that the PW won't find on your PW. If there are still items indexing you'll get a message showing how many items are left to index.

I know some folks have had problems with some files either taking a long time to index or files that for some reason the PW can't index at all. My understanding is that if this happens, the PW will continue to try to index the files continuing to drain battery life.

Best practice is to load a few files (10-20) at a time. (Of course that's not what I do!) LOL

Good point, forgot about that, since I haven't had to index more than one or two books in quite a while....

[jbcohen]

There is a store near me called Batteries Plus, that are the most knowlegable about batteries of any sort. They are also on the internet at batteriesplus.com, their slogan is "if it runs on batteries we got it." i have gone to them several times with various questions about batteries and I have yet to stump them.

[HarryT]

Leave it connected to the wall charger until it's finished indexing. You can see how many books remain to be indexed by doing a search for a nonsense string from the home screen - it'll say "X items not yet indexed", or something similar.

[BookCat]

I've just done a nonsense search, the result was "There weren't any title or author matches in your library for "fgh".".
The battery indicator has been showing virtually empty for a while, but the reader is still operating, which makes me wonder whether the indicator does need to be calibrated. I'll let the kindle run down to empty then give it a long charge.

My PW2 only has 44 books on it, loaded at different times, about five at a time.

It's in one of those covers which put it to sleep when closed, I have wondered whether this is working properly, but it does seem to be - I closed it then tried to peek through the top to see if the light was still on, it wasn't.

I have the light set to between 10 and 14. One reason I wanted a lighted reader is that the lighting in my current house is poor (this will be changed when I get an electrician in to do other work).

I know this seems silly, but I've become attached to this reader and would be loathe to send it back, but if I have to, I'll try for a replacement. Apart from this battery issue and shortage of fonts, I really like the PW2.

[dordale]

BookCat--hopefully you get your battery/meter sorted out. It does sound like it might just be a meter calibration issue at this point. Fingers crossed that that's all it is and that the meter will calibrate itself shortly.

Regarding the search to make sure you have no items still indexing, you need to do an "all text" search instead of an "all items" search.--Click on the dropdown list on the left of the search box and choose "all text". If all items are done indexing the message you'll receive is "there were no content matches in your library for..." (rather than title/author matches).

And I know what you mean about becoming attached to your PW2--I'd really hate to do without mine, even though I have a perfectly functioning Sony 650 and a 350 for backup!

[sirmaru]

Originally Posted by BookCat

I've just done a nonsense search, the result was "There weren't any title or author matches in your library for "fgh".".
The battery indicator has been showing virtually empty for a while, but the reader is still operating, which makes me wonder whether the indicator does need to be calibrated. I'll let the kindle run down to empty then give it a long charge.

My PW2 only has 44 books on it, loaded at different times, about five at a time.

It's in one of those covers which put it to sleep when closed, I have wondered whether this is working properly, but it does seem to be - I closed it then tried to peek through the top to see if the light was still on, it wasn't.

I have the light set to between 10 and 14. One reason I wanted a lighted reader is that the lighting in my current house is poor (this will be changed when I get an electrician in to do other work).

I know this seems silly, but I've become attached to this reader and would be loathe to send it back, but if I have to, I'll try for a replacement. Apart from this battery issue and shortage of fonts, I really like the PW2.

When the battery is truly empty, the screen will show two large lighting bolts and an arrow pointing to a battery.

Then do an overnight charge and see if the meter is functioning properly. This task is only necessary once.

All of my Kindles needed this task when first purchased. I own two Fires and two PW's.

[BookCat]

Dordale, I did what you've suggested and the result is confusing. Under the menu bar icons it says "Search Results (0)" but further down, in larger font it says "Items Not Yet Indexed (8)". It's been days since I loaded anything onto the reader; any idea what's going on?

[dordale]

BookCat--

It sounds like your PW is hanging up on indexing one of your books. Unfortunately I have no idea why this happens on some books--I've never had it happen to me, but I have read posts from others here who have had it happen to. I personally don't know of any way to pinpoint the book that the PW is getting hung up on--maybe someone else does.

The only solution I know of is to delete all books and only load a few at a time--making sure they've all indexed properly before adding the next batch. Then you should be able to narrow it down to which book is causing the problem. I think that even though your PW shows 8 items as not being indexed yet, it's probably only one book causing the problem. I'm pretty sure if it gets caught up on one book it won't go on to the next book. You might try deleting the last batch or two of books you added--it's probably one of those that is having a problem.

It should only take the PW2 a few minutes or so to index 8-10 books.

Good luck!

[BookCat]

In trying to carry out your suggestion, I've found a number of books which won't delete. I keep touching the delete and it highlights but the message box for delete or cancel doesn't come up. Could this be because the reader is trying to index them?

Update: I managed to delete books one by one, doing a nonsense search after each one and noting the ones which had an effect on the indexing count. There were 8 books which seem to have been affected, some of them ones which I've paid for, rather than freebies or PD. What do I do now? Put them on one at a time?

Oh, I think the problem with the deleting was the battery. Soon after typing the first part of this message I had a low battery warning, as soon as I put the reader on the charger I could delete books.