Question about K3 Freezing up issue that was posted on the Amazon Forum

[Jo]

I placed my order for the Kindle 3 yesterday after a number of reviews from Kindleboard members.  I then saw this morning the post on Amazon's Kindle forum about the K3 freezing up. Of course this now has me worried that maybe I should wait. However I have noticed in the past that many posters on the Amazon forum tend to blow things up bigger than they are and am wondering if this may be the case.

My question is has anyone here had a freezing issue with their new K3's and was it just during the time they were downloading their library and indexing or has the problem continue that they have now contacted customer service about it?

Thanks in advance for you responses

[CAR]

Hi Jo,

With all these books and pdfs being loaded on the K3's at once you would kinda expect a few hiccups.  In my opinion, other then the shipping issues, the Kindle 3 release has gone very well. I am very happy with mine. 

Chuck

[Arkali]

Mine's "frozen up" a couple of times, but honestly, it hasn't been a big deal.  Neither time was while I was downloading - I think it was after it had been asleep for a while.  The first time I powered it off and then back on and it was fine, and then the second time I think it came back on it's own.

[Jason in OH]

Mine did it for the first time about an hour ago. I just restarted the device and it was fine. I'm sure if there is an issue it is entirely software-related, and Amazon will issue a fix. Honestly even if it does freeze every day (which I know it will not) I would still use this over any other reader -- that is how amazingly awesome my Kindle 3 is

[Linjeakel]

With hundreds of thousand of new devices being sent out all at once it's inevitable that there'll be a few with problems and those are the ones you hear about. A hundred people might post about their Kindle freezing up but you don't hear from the 400,900 people whose Kindles are working just fine. If you were unlucky enough to get a dud, Amazon will soon replace it for you.

[Ann in Arlington]

No problems. . . . . . . I even d/l'd about 85 things at once. . . . took roughly an hour to index and the battery did drain fairly sharply as it was doing that. . . .but it didn't freeze. . . . . .WiFi on the whole time as well. . . .

[lynninva]

Mine froze up first thing this morning - cursor would not move and couldn't change pages.  I did get a little concerned that I might have a bad unit. But I did a hard reset and it came back fine. My biggest issue was that I couldn't remember how long to hold the switch for the reset. (and didn't think to check the user guide I had downloaded to the Kindle app on my iPad a few weeks ago).

I had some issue early on with my K2 and customer service had me do a reset. I never had an issue with it again, so I am not worried about a one-time issue. We'll see what tomorrow brings after it has been sleeping all night.

[Dan]

I had a freeze up last night but mine turned out to be due to an operator error.  (Was pressing the wrong button to turn pages forward).

[VondaZ]

Mine froze while it was charging for the first time and I was trying to download my books from the Archive. I hadn't downloaded many books when the problem occurred. The unit was completely frozen. I couldn't even do the reset - I tried with it plugged in and not plugged in and tried several times holding it for as long as 30 seconds but it wouldn't respond to anything. I read in the user's guide PDF to let it charge for at least 30 minutes, then unplug and do the reset, so I just left it alone to charge more. Ten minutes later, I checked it and it had come back again, but I no longer had any of my books that I had downloaded. It was a little disconcerting when it happened, but it helped that I was forewarned that it could lock up during initial download, so I did not panic and just had a little patience.

I decided to download books from the Manage My Kindle page on amazon.com ,and it downloaded them all instantly with no problems and no locking up while it was still charging. I have had no problems since then and I have been using it non-stop for the last two days. I have even played Every Word on it and it has not locked up during gameplay. I think it was overwhelmed with me downloading from the Archives. I don't think it was a big deal, but if the problem recurs, I am sure an upgrade will come out to fix it.

If I had it to do over again, I would let my unit charge for at least a half hour before I tried downloading (ideally wait for a full charge, but I was not very patient) and I would download from Manage My Kindle on Amazon's website instead of from the Archives on the Kindle. I definitely am happy with my new Kindle.

[tomatogirl]

If I had it to do over again, I would let my unit charge for at least a half hour before I tried downloading (ideally wait for a full charge, but I was not very patient) and I would download from Manage My Kindle on Amazon's website instead of from the Archives on the Kindle.

That's really useful info - and this whole thread as well. This is my first Kindle, so I'm a little on-edge about actually getting the darn thing. (first wave, but Tuesday delivery. grrr.)

Thanks everyone!

[NiLuJe]

The hard reset (via the power switch) only work with the Kindle completely unplugged from any power source, because it's actually a battery disconnect. (That's somewhat murkily specified in the KUG, but still ).

[Tip10]

No freeze-ups here at all.

[Jo]

Thank you everyone for your responses so far. I think since I already have a good number of books on my K2 I will do as Vonda suggested and download through Manage My Kindle page on Amazon. I am thinking with all the activity going on to load the Kindle could be part of the freezing problem as I am sure my books are nothing compared to some of the KB members here so I will take it slow to load 

Unless something happens I should have my new K3 by mid to late September. The funny thing is I have a Decal Girl skin on order for it already because I had a 25 dollar coupon I won from them and held out hoping they would have the K3 design before it would expire. Also got a skin for my phone that will match. 

[DYB]

I haven't had any freezing up issues.  The only problem I've had so far is that two books won't index (both are large files: 7+mbs), so maybe it's just taking a while.  I'll give them another day before I raise an alarm!

[history_lover]

I placed my order for the Kindle 3 yesterday after a number of reviews from Kindleboard members.  I then saw this morning the post on Amazon's Kindle forum about the K3 freezing up. Of course this now has me worried that maybe I should wait. However I have noticed in the past that many posters on the Amazon forum tend to blow things up bigger than they are and am wondering if this may be the case.

My question is has anyone here had a freezing issue with their new K3's and was it just during the time they were downloading their library and indexing or has the problem continue that they have now contacted customer service about it?

Thanks in advance for you responses

I'd had mine for about 24 hours now and so far, it's frozen and then auto rebooted twice and then once just froze up without rebooting itself (so I manually did so). It's annoying and Amazon definitely need to sort it out, hopefully with just a firmware update or something. But in the meantime, it's still usable. It's not like it's freezing up every 15 minutes. I just hope I don't have to send it back and get a new one - all this waiting for it to begin with and now I might have to send it back and wait some more? Plus, I'd have to set up all my collections and stuff again? That would not be cool.

For me, it has frozen up at all different times, the most recent was while I was clicking the cursor down to highlight something. Once was while just browsing the store. Another while I was reading the user guide. It was not downloading or indexing anything at any of the times (I've only downloaded a few of my read books). So it has nothing to do with overloading it with work for me.

If it happens again, I'm contacting CS to find out what they intend to do about it. You're right that some people tend to blow things up bigger than they are but it does need to be resolved.

[Alice Y. Yeh]

Mine was fine when I was just reading books and The New Yorker. When I went ahead and tried the webkit browser, however, I logged into Facebook, tried to move the cursor around a bit...and boom. Froze. I just power off/on, and everything was well again.

[joolz]

Mine froze up last night. I was skipping around in a book, I think (went back to look at the cover or something) and suddenly it wouldn't do anything. Took a few tries of holding the power switch for a while to get it to come back up, but it was fine after that.

I didn't have any un-indexed books, so I know that wasn't the problem.

[simonz]

My K3 did an auto-reboot while I was managing my Collections.  Then I had one freeze while I was using the web browser, which required sliding the power switch for about 20 seconds to do a power-off and reboot.  In both cases things seemed normal after the reboot.

[RobertK]

Amazon CS is shipping me a new Kindle. I was (am) having really frequent reboots. Basically, any time I use the directional pad thing I will, after a short time, have the screen freeze and have it reboot. It's kind of annoying and it resets whatever book I was on to my previous session, resets the cock, etc.This has happened at least 15 times or so.

I called them to see if I needed to do a software restore or something like that, but they just said they'd ship a new one and have it here on Tuesday.

Kind of a bummer, but at least I get the new one before shipping this one back.

[gdae23]

I haven't had any freezing up issues.  The only problem I've had so far is that two books won't index (both are large files: 7+mbs), so maybe it's just taking a while.  I'll give them another day before I raise an alarm!

I had one freeze up which I consider my own fault as I was pushing buttons a bit too fast as I tried setting things up. The restart worked fine. Interestingly, I had one item that wouldn't index before the restart, but when I restarted, it showed up as indexed. Also, many items had the word "new" next to them on the contents pages, and I was resigned to opening each one separately to get rid of that. But after the restart, that was all gone as well. I tested a few and they open up fine, so no problems there. So even if your Kindle hasn't frozen up, you may want to do a restart to help along the indexing and set-up process.

[telracs]

I have a sort of tangential question. Are the kindles that are freezing 3G or WiFi ones?  I'm wondering if the WiFi ones are picking up stray signals from somewhere that is causing the freezing/re-boot.

[Emmalita]

I also had an issue with the kindle freezing and then automatically rebooting.  I called CS and am pretty sure I figured out what caused the problem.  I was using the download guide from feedbooks.com to download public domain content through the kindle browser.  When I would download the content, a few minutes later it would freeze and then reboot.  After a hard reset, the kindle has been working just fine.  CS told me that if I wanted they would just send a new one, but since I think I have the issue solved, I told them I would hold off on that.

[gdae23]

have a sort of tangential question. Are the kindles that are freezing 3G or WiFi ones?  I'm wondering if the WiFi ones are picking up stray signals from somewhere that is causing the freezing/re-boot.

Mine is a 3G. I don't have WiFi at home.

[Seamonkey]

I have the 3G, since Thursday.  A few freezes, but this morning a real freeze.  Did a hard reset, got a white screen..

Although the battery hadn't been at all low, I put it on the charger and did get the yellow light.  Left it until it went green.

Hard reset while on the charger..  white screen, still.  Off the charger.. white screen.

Have to find the Kindle CS number but I have a soundly sleeping cat on my lap so cannot get downstairs to retrieve my cell phone, where I think I have the number stored. 

[Seamonkey]

OK, I called ... we did a hard reset off the charger and waited and waited.. and, although I had done the same earlier, this time of course it worked.. well it reset back to earlier today in terms of collections and such.

Anyway, he said he would make a note that it could be problemmatic in case I have further glitches.