Can this Kindle be saved?

[crich70]

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

I'm a firm Manichaen in some respects; things of the material world are of the devil, and you never know what they'll do, and always at the most inopportune moment!

I just think that no matter what the designers say machines have minds of their own and decide to take a break at the worst time possible.

[BeccaPrice]

Just got an email from Mom; her k3 is misbehaving again. I told her to mail it to me, and I'll either fix it or transfer her books over to my old k3, and send her that.

She reads for hours and hours at a time each day - it's one of her few pass-times - so we need to get this fixed for her asap.

[cicsos2]

Becca - Don't forget about the DRM on those books purchased from Amazon. They will only work on her Kindle.

Best of luck getting it to behave again.

[BeccaPrice]

I don't think she has any on there that were purchased from Amazon directly. I think everything she's got are files I've sent her. But thanks for the reminder... I'll make sure to check that when I get her kindle.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

no, it's in an M-edge case, so the case isn't the issue.

i wish AZ wasn't so far away, or that I wasn't so busy... I'd take a long weekend to fly out there and see what I could do for her. She doesn't use Calibre, and she does have a lot of books on it, set up into collections. Most of them are books I've sent her rather than ones she's purchased from Amazon, so a factory reset and then reloading the books will be a non-trivial exercise.

Have your mom install Teamviewer. Then you can get into her computer. She can plug the Kindle into the USB and you can copy the contents off to the computer.

Then you can walk her through a reset and load the content back on after. Yes, the collections may be lost, but the content will be there.

[Edward_R]

There are a couple of things you can have your mother try before mailing her kindle to you, or if she's already mailed it you can do it.

1) Check for indexing problems - From the home page do a search and see if there are any books that are stuck indexing.

2) Restart Kindle (not factory reset) this should restart the kindle and any processes that might be stuck without deleting anything:
From the home page press menu, then choose settings, once on the settings page press menu again and choose Restart.

[BeccaPrice]

Jon: that sounds a bit more technical than either Mom or I would be comfortable with - she has problems with Calibre, much less downloading and installing some software.

Edward_R, Mom has tried the hard reboot numerous times, to no avail. Really, the only thing left to try is a factory reset. When I get it, I'll check and see whether it has the most current version of the firmware, too - my bet is she hasn't updated it, well, ever (she never turns on the wifi so she wouldn't have it force-sent to her unit.).

I will check the indexing; that's a good suggestion.

Once I get the kindle in my hot little hands, if none of the above work, I'll call Kindle customer service, see if they have any suggestions beyond the obvious.

Fortunately, I've got my old K3 I can send her if it does indeed turn out hers is fatally dead. And, if worse comes to worst, I'll get her a basic kindle (because I can use Calibre to set up collections on that) and send that to her.

[pidgeon92]

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

Jon: that sounds a bit more technical than either Mom or I would be comfortable with - she has problems with Calibre, much less downloading and installing some software.

It's actually very easy to use. I would agree that perhaps it might be a bit much for your mother to download and configure, but the next time you visit you could install it for her.

I use it all the time now. Just yesterday I used it to access the laptop of a friend who was having trouble with her browser bookmarks. It's a heck of a lot easier than schlepping over there every time there is an issue.