Troubleshooting Yet another bootlooping kindle (Kindle Paperwhite 11th gen)

[Ph1syc]

Hey! so i posted this originally posted this on reddit and was told to post this here, so here i am!

around a year ago my friend purchased a kindle paperwhite gen 11 off of amazon brand new, a few weeks in it began bootlooping on the kid with tree screen for no apparent reason so he set it aside until he felt like fixing it, well a year later and it still laid around so i decided to take a shot at it, i have tried many different methods to fix it but non have worked yet (listed bellow), amazon have been extremely unsupportive and just offered the same solutions i have blatantly stated haven't worked. please note that the kindle has not been modded or jailbroken in any way.

THING I'VE TRIED:
1) Force rebooting (Holding the power button for 40 seconds and waiting 2 minutes)

2) Fully charge the device for 24h and force reboot

3) Let the battery drain completely, wait 24h and reboot

4) Connecting the kindle to my pc and putting a manual update file in the root folder (The kindle only appears for a split second and wont allow me to transfer any files over)

5) Opening it up and clean all the connectors (The bottom of the motherboard was unavailable unless i would break the case :/ )

6) Using this guide to flash the memory (I couldn't access the appropriate pins as the were on the inaccessible side of the motherboard, also i don't yet own a tty to usb cable)

(more absurd ones from a guide recommended on r/kindle)

7) Tapping, smacking, and slapping the kindle and force rebooting

8) Putting the kindle in the freezer for 30 minutes (i swear i'm not joking)


Any help would be appreciated

[mergen3107]

Did you check the USB connector? Any dust particulates? Try compressed air.

[shamanNS]

Originally Posted by Ph1syc

(The kindle only appears for a split second and wont allow me to transfer any files over)

During that "split second" are you able to see if while computer detects Kindle as a removable device that drive has a size and file system / partition detected?

My PW5 doesn't, it is detected as a size 0 drive and non-formatted (but it is stays visible for like 10 seconds, X% of the time between 2 restarts in bootloop).

If your Kindle manages to actually export the FAT filesystem content you maybe could be successful in creating a empty "DO_FACTORY_RESTORE" file using a Command Promt script that loops a command to create that file on a drive letter that you Kindle mounts to, and maaaaybe then the device manages to do a factory reset and fixes itself.


I had 2 out of 2 Kindle PW5 (aka Paperwhite 11th gen) stuck in a bootloop. "killed by a normal restart" bug / moment.

First unit after 2 weeks and the second after 15-16 months.
There was nothing to be done other that contacting Amazon support and ask for a replacement or a repair under warranty (I was "lucky" to have a Paperwhite Kids that comes with 2 year warranty instead of 1 year warranty that "regular" Paperwhite gets). My replacement of a replacement will be arriving next week but I'm still not sure if I should keep it and use it or if it is better to re-sell it to someone...

p.s. Don't bother with buying a TTY to USB cable. PW5 doesn't have contact pads for serial connection (it uses a special USB cable that plugs into USB-C connector) and anyways it is locked down.