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#1 Thing to Do When Having Problems with Your Kindle

March 15, 2023 by Nathan 7 Comments

Kindle Paperwhite Agave

Over on Amazon’s official Kindle forum, there are bunch of random posts from people having problems with their Kindles, everything from not being able to download ebooks to getting errors when trying to buy something from the Kindle Store, and some people are experiencing WiFi issues or their Kindle keeps freezing up.

It’s kind of funny because random people and Amazon Staff members chime in and the answer is usually the same regardless of the specific issue or bug the poster is encountering with their Kindle, and it’s the first rule of tech support.

Restart your device.

It’s a good reminder for anyone that uses a Kindle. If your Kindle starts acting buggy, if it seems slower than usual or something isn’t working right, the first thing you should do is restart it and see if that helps.

To restart your Kindle, go to Settings > Device Options > Restart. You can also hold down the power button for 6 seconds to bring up a dialog box with the option to restart.

If your Kindle is frozen and it’s not responding, hold down the power button for approximately 40 seconds. That will also trigger a restart, and it’s not exactly obvious considering how long you have to hold down on the power button. Just keep holding down until your finger cramps up nice and good.

Nine times out of ten a restart will fix most random software issues on a Kindle. If that doesn’t work, the next thing most customer service reps will tell you to do is apply a factory reset. That’s a bit more drastic because it will remove all of your downloaded and transferred content, and everything will go back to how it was when you first got your Kindle. You’ll have to redownload all of your books and set things up all over again, but that usually works to fix more serious issues.

If you need to reset your Kindle, go to Settings > Device Options > Reset.

Now that you know about restarting and resetting your Kindle, you’re fully trained to be a Kindle customer service rep.

Filed Under: Amazon Kindle, How To

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Rod says

    March 15, 2023 at 8:04 pm

    LOL. But true, restarting works. The other day my kindle decided to restart itself after having using for about an hour and a half of listening to voiceview. When it restarted it did not complete the process and froze at 60%. I did the reset move and it has been working with no problems ever since. I once had my kindle acting up and it turned out that I had a corrupted PDF file. Once I deleted that file my kindle returned to working as intended. So, sometime a bad file can be the culprit. Try deleting the last book you opened when you had the problem before factory resetting your device.

    Reply
    • Val rylance says

      March 20, 2023 at 11:44 am

      Went through all that and eventually, after 2nd phone call, found out that newspapers are being renegotiated and no one can download them as authority has been withdrawn. So much for a restart.

      Reply
  2. Rick says

    March 16, 2023 at 2:11 pm

    The biggest problem that I have with Kindle lately is that once I’m reading a book I can’t get out of it. The library button which is like a back button in the top left disappears so I cannot get out of the book that I’m reading. This happens across all of my Kindles, paperwhite, Oasis, and even the Scribe. The frustrating part is that it happens continuously 2-3 times per day so I have to constantly restart my Kindle which takes about another 2 to 3 minutes. Is there any other way to get out of a book that I’m reading?

    Reply
    • Nathan says

      March 16, 2023 at 3:40 pm

      I’ve seen that issue mentioned a number of times over the past several months, but I haven’t encountered it yet myself. It’s weird that it’s happening to you that often.

      Reply
      • Rick says

        March 16, 2023 at 10:20 pm

        Yes, it started happening in the past two updates, never had this issue before but now it’s constant. Very frustrating

        Reply
  3. Lesley Kraushaar says

    March 26, 2023 at 1:42 pm

    My kindle steadfastly refuses to work no matter what I do. I will never buy another one.

    Reply
  4. Stefan says

    August 23, 2023 at 11:19 pm

    My kindle for some reason cones up with the star rating screen at ralndom points in a book. Anyone got any ideas. Reset and factory restarted.

    Reply

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