# Kindle 5th Gen Wi-fi Issue



## brsmith77 (Jun 22, 2017)

Hi

As the title suggests I am having a nightmare trying to get my Dad's new kindle to use wi-fi. I have had this problem in the past with Kindles. Amazon's help site and phone line have been exactly zero help. Wondering if someone here might know what's up.

The kindle in question is a 5th Gen version 4.1.3

I have tried resetting the kindle and the router, both with soft reset and a factory reset but no joy; in WIFI under Settings it just shows 0 Networks. Clicking on the 'View' button does nothing; it refuses to even attempt to connect. The wi-fi network is fine and all other devices can access it.

There are two other Kindles in the house as well as an Ipad, A PC and a laptop.

It also says Mac Address: Not available on the Kindle.


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## KimberlyinMN (Dec 30, 2009)

Hmmm... maybe it is just a defective Kindle? It sure sounds you've done everything I would try. I was going to suggest seeing if it would show a WiFi connection available at some place that has free WiFi. Or even try with a smartphone with hotspot capabilities. (But that still doesn't help with connecting to his WiFi.)


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## brsmith77 (Jun 22, 2017)

Thanks for the response. 

Yes, I was leaning in that direction but what stops me giving up is that I have had this issue with multiple kindles in one household before. I just can't remember how I fixed it!

I am thinking it might be a MAC address conflict but that is beyond my abilities to tackle.


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## brsmith77 (Jun 22, 2017)

Problem Solved.  

I finally remembered how to fix this and am commenting here in case anyone with a similar problem views this. 

If your Kindle is not seeing any wi-fi network switch on Aeroplane mode, then go into settings and press the menu button and select 'Factory reset'. It will reset and when it comes back on you can go through the wi-fi set up which will see the network this time. 

No idea why this works, but it does.


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## KimberlyinMN (Dec 30, 2009)

That's great!! I'm going to have make a note in Outlook about this. I'm sure I'll run into this at some time.   Thanks for sharing this!!


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## brsmith77 (Jun 22, 2017)

No probs!  

I seem to remember reading somewhere that this problem can pop up when you have several kindles on one wi-fi network. It is very hard to find a solution for and Amazon's helpline, as noted in my original post, is not very helpful; my mum spent hours on the phone to someone who didn't really understand the problem and who took about 5 hours to tell her to turn it on and off again!


A small failing in Amazon's usually excellent customer support.


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## Rannoch (Jun 20, 2018)

brsmith77 said:


> Problem Solved.
> 
> I finally remembered how to fix this and am commenting here in case anyone with a similar problem views this.
> 
> ...


I've registered on this forum for the single purpose of thanking you!

I searched extensively and for quite some time on the internet for a solution, but as usual most of the problems described weren't quite the same as the one I was experiencing. And of those the did have the same problem, responders either misunderstood the problem or were unable to provide a working solution.

I held little hope that your solution would work (it does sound a bit crazy!), but it certainly did resolve the issue, and suddenly I have a working Kindle again!

Thank you !!!!


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## Fawitte (Jul 2, 2018)

Thank you so much for this...


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## MR B (Jan 27, 2019)

I just came here to thank you for this post, I found it after a long search. 
This worked for me also. 
Just a note you must do a factory reset, so any book loaded manually will be lost unless you copy to your computer first.


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## brando (Jun 23, 2020)

i have done all those steps however after reset, there is no wifi list for me to chose one.  it looks like it automatically connects, (i get the full bars at the top), but it doesn't.  it keeps saying unable to connect to internet.
any ideas how to fix this?


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## kys (3 mo ago)

This has been driving me mad... but I fixed this by doing a manual update to the latest kindle software, WITHOUT losing my collection of books(yay!) - see Manually Update Your Kindle E-Reader Software - Amazon Customer Service - you download your kindle's latest software update (in my case 5.6.1.1) from the page linked from here, to a PC, connect the Kindle, copy the .bin file over to the Kindle, then update.

If you're not sure which generation you have this is useful too: Which Kindle do I have? A quick guide to identifying all of Amazon's e-readers


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