Had an issue with my Kindle Touch today where anytime I tried to activate certain applications (like, for instance, the Special Offers app), I’d receive an error message that said “Unable to Start Application”. Since there was an awesome deal to get an award-winning book from a selection of books for $1, I spent some Google-juice figuring out how to fix it.
Oh, Kindle....why are you tasking me?
Turns out, there’s a way to reboot the Kindle Touch beyond holding the power button down till it blinks (which evidently is a fake reboot).
To hard reboot the Kindle Touch:
Press the Menu button. Press Settings. After the Settings menu appears, press the Menu button again. Then press Restart.
If your Kindle is particularly depressed and you can’t get to the Menu, try holding down the power button to fake reboot, then try again. You could also try resetting to factory default — although it always pains me greatly to have to do that to a device.
Hopefully, this is just a firmware problem that will be fixed in the next go-round.
Thanks for the tip. My Touch 3G was working fine until yesterday. It started acting slow and I started getting those “unable to start application” notices. I was reading some comments and some people were suggesting the issue started after they downloaded a book so I deleted the most recent one I downoaded. Didn’t change anthing. The tip seems to have done the job. I’ll give it another week or so to see if anything changes. Otherwise, I’m bringing it back. Is this something that can be fixed with an update? These things get updates, yea? I know the Keyboard 3G one gets updated. Or is this strickly a hardware issue? Thanks again.
I’ve seen people suggest it’s after they downloaded a certain number of books at a time. Knowing how to reboot it is probably the key thing. I’m thinking this is a firmware thing that Amazon can fix with a software update.
Got into the search bar and searched at the store. Then I got an update (i.e.”We’re updating your kindle experience “). Then the store seemed to load ok, and the kindle was more responsive. Then, I was able to get the menu to load, and performed the reboot mentioned above. Bouncing to the store seemed to do it.
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!! I was worried that I was going to lose all of my books when I did this, but I didn’t! YAAAAAYYYYYYYYY!!!!!
Thanks for the tip as well. I didn’t realize that the power button wasn’t doing a hard boot. Once I selected “restart” from the menu, my ads worked again.
I have a similar issue with my Blackberry Bold. It only does a hard reboot if you pull the freakin battery out and put it in again.