Software update bricked my Kindle

[feanor87]

So last morning, I woke up to find my Kindle showing a static screen that said that a software update it had tried to install had not been successful. The on-screen instructions asked me to press the power button to restart it.

However, pressing the power button didn't work. I looked at the Kindle support website, and pressed it for 7 seconds as recommended, which didn't work either. Then I tried the 'reset' method by press-and-holding it for the full 40 seconds. The screen flashed, and I saw the boot screen with the tree and the boy. But the progress bar that shows the OS is loading didn't appear. It just shows that static OS screen (without any progress bar) with the backlight on, and stays there forever.

I made sure I charged the device for the full 20 hours as recommended in the forums here. I tried resetting it with the power cable plugged in, as well as unplugged. Nothing makes a difference. Resetting just causes the screen to flash and the static boot screen to come back on.

When I plug it into my PC, I do not see the USB drive option. I have also checked in the Device Manager that it wasn't a corrupted or partial install. Bottom line, my Kindle is non-functional, and not recognized by my computer (tried with different computers), so I can't even try any of the steps recommended by the other threads in this forum, and various other places online. I am at my wit's end.

What's most annoying is that the device bricked itself - trying to do a software update that I didn't ask it to do. I don't even know what I could have done to prevent this from happening!

Can anyone help me?
Many thanks in advance!

[knc1]

So sue Amazon for destruction of your personal computer equipment.
While waiting for the courts to give you 10% of J.B.'s $15 Billion dollar pocket money - - - -

You don't mention if the device was jailbroken, and if it was, what all you have installed on it - like: CRP
So I assume not.

You also didn't mention how many thousands of books you had on it -
So I assume you did not have any books on it (some of which might be causing the indexer to crash).

• Follow these directions from the start until you have a working serial port connection:
  https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=267541
  And stop at that point in that thread.
• You have a working u-boot and most likely a working kernel with its recovery menu, so jump into the midst of this thread:
  https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...9&postcount=17
  Which is the start of the explanation of how to install a full image using the built-in recovery menu.
  NOTE:If you do have a godzillion books on the device -
  when you get to the part about exporting the USB storage -
  before putting the new update*.bin file on USB storage, delete all (or at least most) of the books.
  The new(est) firmware has to re-build the index database and is probably hung on a 'bad' book.

For people that just had to try out the "Erase All (mmc0)" command -
Start earlier in that second thread with the part about re-installing u-boot from a full image package.