Troubleshooting Kindle 3 Freezes

knuthmeyer · 08-28-2010, 04:41 AM

I had four different freezes with my Kindle 3 in the last day.

1.) While viewing a description to a word at the bottom, I pressed the "Return"-Key and the Kindle 3 frooze. Took my a while to figure out, how to restart it (Hold the on/Off switch for a long long time)
2.) While scrolling through a page with the cursorpad, the Kindle frooze and restarted automatically. Unfortunately the last position was lost, so I had to browse through the book again, to continue reading.
3.) After reboot, I wanted to select my book in the home page and it frooze again.

I hope this is just a software problem, not a hardware one. Looks for me, as if there is a race condition between the update of the dictionary box and the cursor movement.

Anyone noticed that?

tomsem · 08-28-2010, 08:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by knuthmeyer

I had four different freezes with my Kindle 3 in the last day.

1.) While viewing a description to a word at the bottom, I pressed the "Return"-Key and the Kindle 3 frooze. Took my a while to figure out, how to restart it (Hold the on/Off switch for a long long time)
2.) While scrolling through a page with the cursorpad, the Kindle frooze and restarted automatically. Unfortunately the last position was lost, so I had to browse through the book again, to continue reading.
3.) After reboot, I wanted to select my book in the home page and it frooze again.

I hope this is just a software problem, not a hardware one. Looks for me, as if there is a race condition between the update of the dictionary box and the cursor movement.

Anyone noticed that?

Me too (5 or 6 crashes so far, doing nothing in particular). Keep in mind that it is probably indexing your (all new) content in the background, which on K2 made the system a little fragile. At least that's what I'm hoping it is.

6charlong · 08-30-2010, 07:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by knuthmeyer

I had four different freezes with my Kindle 3 in the last day.

1.) While viewing a description to a word at the bottom, I pressed the "Return"-Key and the Kindle 3 frooze. Took my a while to figure out, how to restart it (Hold the on/Off switch for a long long time)
2.) While scrolling through a page with the cursorpad, the Kindle frooze and restarted automatically. Unfortunately the last position was lost, so I had to browse through the book again, to continue reading.
3.) After reboot, I wanted to select my book in the home page and it frooze again.

I hope this is just a software problem, not a hardware one. Looks for me, as if there is a race condition between the update of the dictionary box and the cursor movement.

Anyone noticed that?

Thank you Knuthmeyer! Mine keeps freezing too. I tried the "hold the on/off switch for 15 seconds advice from the user manual and nothing happened. I tried your "long long time" advice and it finally reset, indexed and came back. I must have held the on/off switch 30-60 seconds!

matt314159 · 08-30-2010, 07:55 PM

I have had one hard crash like that. I went to the experimental menu and it crashed. It was about 10 minutes after I downloaded a book out of my archive. However, it was the *only* book I had downloaded, so I wonder if it was indexing still or not. 10 minutes for one book seems like a long time.

matt314159 · 08-30-2010, 08:14 PM

son of a #$@&, I'm sitting here highlighting some corrections in a document I'm proofreading (.doc emailed to myself on the kindle) and I set it down for a moment, look back at it, and the damn thing is restarting itself. I hope it kept all the highlights and annotations I was working on right before it crashed. This is going to piss me off if it starts making crashes a habit. Right now I think my windows mobile phone crashes less frequently, and that's really saying something.

6charlong · 08-30-2010, 08:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by matt314159

I have had one hard crash like that. I went to the experimental menu and it crashed. It was about 10 minutes after I downloaded a book out of my archive. However, it was the *only* book I had downloaded, so I wonder if it was indexing still or not. 10 minutes for one book seems like a long time.

(I have the Wifi only version.) I'd bought a book from Amazon using the Wifi connection and was still poking around in the Amazon store when my Kindle locked up. I tried to wait it out in case there was some background operation trying to finish. After a long while I tried a 4-second reset; after several tries with no response I tried to shut it down with a 15-second hold of the on/off switch and the screen went to blank.

At that point it looked like it was bricked. No screen, no response to any combination of attempts to reset, not visible on the PC when plugged in. I finally found this thread and tried Knuthmeyer's "long long" hold on the on/off switch. At first it didn't seem to have done anything. Then it suddenly flashed the screen and gave me the startup screen I got the first time I tried to start it.

I think I'll make my book selections with the PC and just use the Wifi to download the books until I know what's going on.

Mirtika · 09-06-2010, 11:25 PM

Had mine for a few days. Had only downloaded on the PC and synched to Kindle 3. Less than an hour ago, I tried to get a sample downloaded directly to the Kindle while Kindle-browsing titles. Did that dead thing. Scared the poop outta me as I thought it died. Came online and saw that this is not a unique issue. Tried the 30 second "hold" and that worked. I knew it was fully charged (had taken it off the plug from charging earlier and it had been charging for more than an hour).

I really am leery now that I have one of the buggy ones. I never had my Sony Reader crash in the early days (and only once after more than a year of ownership). So...hm....not happy. I only use the K3 about an hour a day so far, and I don't use it roughly (use it 99% of time at home on the couch). But the battery showed about 1/4th used after two days. I thought this was supposed to last 3 weeks on a charge with wireless on?

Hm. Okay, I need to chill. But while I love reading on this and love how quickly books are downloaded/synched, I'm really scared of all the crash/freeze/bug reports I'm seeing on a google.

vega07 · 09-07-2010, 02:28 AM

mine frozed and resetted about 10 times. some of them were automatic resets, some I had to force reboot. and I HATE how I have to skip forward many pages to get to the location I was at.

amazon better fix this soon.

babyd · 09-07-2010, 05:03 AM

yeah, mine has gone a bit loopy today. I have had freezes and reboots once or twice over the past few days but today, it went bad and lost all my collections for the first time........nothing would get them back, even going into the archive and adding device collections, got them back finally by de-registering and re-registering, phew !

pchrist7 · 09-07-2010, 05:37 AM

Yesterday, 1 crash and 1 freeze. First time in the week I've used. Lets see...

ylsul · 09-07-2010, 11:40 AM

It bugs me how crashy my K3 can be. Normally it isn't, but if I spend too much time messing with the browser, I know I'm going to have to do a manual restart at some point or suffer the consequences.

I really hope they come out with some fixes soon.

As a reader, it is totally fine. I find it only happens when I spend too much time shopping for books or using the browser.

HarryT · 09-07-2010, 11:42 AM

Since I stopped using the browser my K3 has been totally stable. No problems at all while reading books. I'd suggest not using the browser until it gets more stable.

tomsem · 09-07-2010, 11:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vega07

mine frozed and resetted about 10 times. some of them were automatic resets, some I had to force reboot. and I HATE how I have to skip forward many pages to get to the location I was at.

amazon better fix this soon.

After experiencing the 'automatic' restart variety, I would force reset (unplug from power, hold power slider 'on' for 30 seconds or so). Otherwise I don't think you can assume everything was successfully cleaned up, and you're more likely to experience another problem. In my case, there were a couple of incidents where it just kept restarting just as it appeared to get to a state of 'ready'. That's evidence that 'automatic' restart doesn't clean up everything.

tomsem · 09-07-2010, 12:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HarryT

Since I stopped using the browser my K3 has been totally stable. No problems at all while reading books. I'd suggest not using the browser until it gets more stable.

At least in my case, there was no pattern to the crashes, they found me no matter what I was doing (˜12x over the first week).

I say 'was' because Amazon updated my Kindle to 3.0.1 and I'm starting my 3rd day of zero problems. Still a little early to declare victory, but if it goes a week like this, I'll be convinced they have fixed something.

And 'freeze' during browsing could just be Kindle hard at work. I've had it wake up after a minute or so and keep going as if nothing had happened.

babyd · 09-07-2010, 02:15 PM

Amazon UK are pushing the update to my kindle in the next 24 hours all being well, been told to keep it plugged in and wireless on till it hits. Been giving them detailed logs of my freezes/reboots and slow page turns. The update is being rolled out to all kindle svery soon. Fingers crossed it solves the issues.

08-28-2010, 04:41 AM	#1
knuthmeyer Enthusiast Posts: 30 Karma: 74 Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: Germany Device: Kindle Paperwhite 2	Kindle 3 Freezes I had four different freezes with my Kindle 3 in the last day. 1.) While viewing a description to a word at the bottom, I pressed the "Return"-Key and the Kindle 3 frooze. Took my a while to figure out, how to restart it (Hold the on/Off switch for a long long time) 2.) While scrolling through a page with the cursorpad, the Kindle frooze and restarted automatically. Unfortunately the last position was lost, so I had to browse through the book again, to continue reading. 3.) After reboot, I wanted to select my book in the home page and it frooze again. I hope this is just a software problem, not a hardware one. Looks for me, as if there is a race condition between the update of the dictionary box and the cursor movement. Anyone noticed that?

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08-30-2010, 07:55 PM	#4
matt314159 Groupie Posts: 198 Karma: 1000 Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: High Desert, SoCal Device: KSO, NookColor (CM7.1), Samsung Mesmerize	I have had one hard crash like that. I went to the experimental menu and it crashed. It was about 10 minutes after I downloaded a book out of my archive. However, it was the only book I had downloaded, so I wonder if it was indexing still or not. 10 minutes for one book seems like a long time.

08-30-2010, 08:14 PM	#5
matt314159 Groupie Posts: 198 Karma: 1000 Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: High Desert, SoCal Device: KSO, NookColor (CM7.1), Samsung Mesmerize	son of a #$@&, I'm sitting here highlighting some corrections in a document I'm proofreading (.doc emailed to myself on the kindle) and I set it down for a moment, look back at it, and the damn thing is restarting itself. I hope it kept all the highlights and annotations I was working on right before it crashed. This is going to piss me off if it starts making crashes a habit. Right now I think my windows mobile phone crashes less frequently, and that's really saying something.

09-06-2010, 11:25 PM	#7
Mirtika Member Posts: 23 Karma: 14 Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Miami, FL Device: Sony Reader PRS505	Had mine for a few days. Had only downloaded on the PC and synched to Kindle 3. Less than an hour ago, I tried to get a sample downloaded directly to the Kindle while Kindle-browsing titles. Did that dead thing. Scared the poop outta me as I thought it died. Came online and saw that this is not a unique issue. Tried the 30 second "hold" and that worked. I knew it was fully charged (had taken it off the plug from charging earlier and it had been charging for more than an hour). I really am leery now that I have one of the buggy ones. I never had my Sony Reader crash in the early days (and only once after more than a year of ownership). So...hm....not happy. I only use the K3 about an hour a day so far, and I don't use it roughly (use it 99% of time at home on the couch). But the battery showed about 1/4th used after two days. I thought this was supposed to last 3 weeks on a charge with wireless on? Hm. Okay, I need to chill. But while I love reading on this and love how quickly books are downloaded/synched, I'm really scared of all the crash/freeze/bug reports I'm seeing on a google.

09-07-2010, 02:28 AM	#8
vega07 Enthusiast Posts: 48 Karma: 50 Join Date: Jul 2010 Device: Kindle 2	mine frozed and resetted about 10 times. some of them were automatic resets, some I had to force reboot. and I HATE how I have to skip forward many pages to get to the location I was at. amazon better fix this soon.

09-07-2010, 05:03 AM	#9
babyd Addict Posts: 384 Karma: 1567 Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: UK Device: Sony:505, 600, 350, 650, Kindle 3 & PW, Kobo Mini & Aura HD	yeah, mine has gone a bit loopy today. I have had freezes and reboots once or twice over the past few days but today, it went bad and lost all my collections for the first time........nothing would get them back, even going into the archive and adding device collections, got them back finally by de-registering and re-registering, phew !

09-07-2010, 05:37 AM	#10
pchrist7 Addict Posts: 385 Karma: 6514 Join Date: Aug 2010 Location: Denmark Device: Kindle 3 3G+Wifi, Oasis	Yesterday, 1 crash and 1 freeze. First time in the week I've used. Lets see...

09-07-2010, 11:40 AM	#11
ylsul Connoisseur Posts: 76 Karma: 53 Join Date: Mar 2007	It bugs me how crashy my K3 can be. Normally it isn't, but if I spend too much time messing with the browser, I know I'm going to have to do a manual restart at some point or suffer the consequences. I really hope they come out with some fixes soon. As a reader, it is totally fine. I find it only happens when I spend too much time shopping for books or using the browser.

09-07-2010, 11:42 AM	#12
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,544 Karma: 93383099 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	Since I stopped using the browser my K3 has been totally stable. No problems at all while reading books. I'd suggest not using the browser until it gets more stable.

09-07-2010, 02:15 PM	#15
babyd Addict Posts: 384 Karma: 1567 Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: UK Device: Sony:505, 600, 350, 650, Kindle 3 & PW, Kobo Mini & Aura HD	Amazon UK are pushing the update to my kindle in the next 24 hours all being well, been told to keep it plugged in and wireless on till it hits. Been giving them detailed logs of my freezes/reboots and slow page turns. The update is being rolled out to all kindle svery soon. Fingers crossed it solves the issues.

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