Kobo needs restart almost every time I add books

[maddz]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Just unplug the cable. If needs be hold down the power button to force a reboot

Sent from my SM-X238U using Tapatalk

Done all that several times. Not working. I suppose it's possible the power button is faulty...

[maddz]

Ah - fiddled with the connector port and gently bent the tongue up so there was a clear gap between the tongue and the bottom edge. Then plugged it in with Kobo Desktop running. Now got a blank white screen with the power button light flashing. Will see what happens next. Still unresponsive when the power button is held down.

[maddz]

I have noticed the Forma port is prone to the tongue going out of alignment.

[maddz]

I am coming to the conclusion that specific Forma is bricked. It's stuck on a white screen with the power button flashing, the long press button tricks don't work, and it's not being detected by my Mac. I can take it to the repair shop next week and see what they say, but even if I get a replacement battery from aliexpress and/or replace the SD card, I think it's not worth the expense. If Kobo come out with a better colour ereader over the autumn, I may go for that, especially if it's a colour Elipsa (I want to be able to read graphic novels offline).

[DNSB]

The Forma uses a eMMC not a µSD card.

[maddz]

Is it easy to replace? We've got a decent repair shop in town.

[Siavahda]

Originally Posted by Siavahda

Yesterday after a lot of scouring forums, I went into my Kobo settings and turned the 'automatically go to sleep after' (under energy savings and privacy) to 'never'. Since then, my Kobo hasn't been freezing as long as I unplug the Kobo from my PC before I close its cover/send it to sleep (instead of leaving it charging). Even with books that a few days ago were definitely making my Kobo freeze!

No idea what's going on, will continue to post updates here.

This continues to be the situation.

What I've found is that, if I eject the Kobo from my PC, but leave it charging - if the Kobo goes to sleep while plugged in, THEN it will freeze.

This does not happen if I plug it into the PC but don't let it connect, so it's only ever charging. And there are no issues with freezing if the Kobo is charging from the wall.

I think there are several problems people are experiencing with very similar symptoms (I don't mean Madz's issues, that's pretty different and more severe), but at this point I'm convinced mine is something to do with connecting to the PC/Calibre, not something caused by a messed-up ebook file.

[Sirtel]

Very strange. I usually unplug my Kobo before it goes to sleep (the sleeping timer is 15 min), but sometimes I have left it charging. I don't remember any of my Kobos ever freezing, though.

[JSWolf]

@Siavahda, install NickelMenu and see if using the it to trigger a scan of eBooks solves your problem.

[maddz]

As it happens, apart from some overly large PDFs from Humble Bundle that weren't opening in the book viewer, I found 13 books that failed Polish Books. Out of >8,500 books, that's not a bad failure rate.

So I've replaced a couple of the PDFs with epub versions (much smaller and open normally and I don't know why I didn't import them as epub in the first place) and marked the others not to be sent to the device (the likelihood of me needing to refer to them is now vanishingly small as I rarely go into the office these days). The other epubs I will have to run through Edit Books or replace; they're mostly old PD books from various Gutenbergs. Generally I keep PDFs in the cloud where I can access them on my iPad.

I'm very reluctant to send the other epubs to my remaining Forma until I'm sure the files are OK. I'm tempted to batch send these to my old Touch to check if they transfer OK before sending to my Forma (which will be my to-do when I'm on leave in a couple of weeks). (FWIW, the 'dead' Forma is stuck on a white screen; I'm trying to run the battery down completely.) Unfortunately, I can't seem to get Check Books or epubcheck to work on the main toolbar or within Edit Books, but epubveri works fine from Edit Books.

[Siavahda]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

@Siavahda, install NickelMenu and see if using the it to trigger a scan of eBooks solves your problem.

I will try that, thank you!

[Siavahda]

Originally Posted by maddz

As it happens, apart from some overly large PDFs from Humble Bundle that weren't opening in the book viewer, I found 13 books that failed Polish Books. Out of >8,500 books, that's not a bad failure rate.

So I've replaced a couple of the PDFs with epub versions (much smaller and open normally and I don't know why I didn't import them as epub in the first place) and marked the others not to be sent to the device (the likelihood of me needing to refer to them is now vanishingly small as I rarely go into the office these days). The other epubs I will have to run through Edit Books or replace; they're mostly old PD books from various Gutenbergs. Generally I keep PDFs in the cloud where I can access them on my iPad.

I'm very reluctant to send the other epubs to my remaining Forma until I'm sure the files are OK. I'm tempted to batch send these to my old Touch to check if they transfer OK before sending to my Forma (which will be my to-do when I'm on leave in a couple of weeks). (FWIW, the 'dead' Forma is stuck on a white screen; I'm trying to run the battery down completely.) Unfortunately, I can't seem to get Check Books or epubcheck to work on the main toolbar or within Edit Books, but epubveri works fine from Edit Books.

Maddz, when you say 'failed Polish Books', what do you mean? I have the Polish Books plugin but I don't think I can run a check on an epub with that - just embed all referenced fonts, smarten punctuation, remove soft hyphens, etc. I ask because I would like to run checks on my files, in case I'm wrong about my issue being about connecting to the PC. (It sure seemed like I had problem files before, but if you read up-thread then you know none of them were showing the same errors/being flagged by the same scanning methods, so I couldn't find a common denominator.)

I would definitely send all your files to your Touch first. That's just sensible if you have the option.

[maddz]

Originally Posted by Siavahda

Maddz, when you say 'failed Polish Books', what do you mean? I have the Polish Books plugin but I don't think I can run a check on an epub with that - just embed all referenced fonts, smarten punctuation, remove soft hyphens, etc. I ask because I would like to run checks on my files, in case I'm wrong about my issue being about connecting to the PC. (It sure seemed like I had problem files before, but if you read up-thread then you know none of them were showing the same errors/being flagged by the same scanning methods, so I couldn't find a common denominator.)

I would definitely send all your files to your Touch first. That's just sensible if you have the option.

Select books to polish, run plug-in with what options you choose. Most polished successfully, but some failed to polish. There's an error message that pops up, and you get the red ! icon in the job list against that book. I tagged the failures, and did a deeper edit books. What was tending to cause the failures was bad (or out-of-date - http not https) links to external resources.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by maddz

Select books to polish, run plug-in with what options you choose. Most polished successfully, but some failed to polish. There's an error message that pops up, and you get the red ! icon in the job list against that book. I tagged the failures, and did a deeper edit books. What was tending to cause the failures was bad (or out-of-date - http not https) links to external resources.

Depending on what it is you want to do, you may be better off using the Modify ePub plugin.

[Siavahda]

Originally Posted by maddz

Select books to polish, run plug-in with what options you choose. Most polished successfully, but some failed to polish. There's an error message that pops up, and you get the red ! icon in the job list against that book. I tagged the failures, and did a deeper edit books. What was tending to cause the failures was bad (or out-of-date - http not https) links to external resources.

Oh I see! Thank you. The books I think might be problems polished with no issue when I tried just now, which I'm saying here just to give us more data.