# Kindle Touch extremely slow



## SSJPabs (Mar 27, 2012)

I got my Kindle Touch at the end of December right after Christmas. I have enjoyed it a lot and added and removed many books from it. Lately though in the last few weeks the Kindle Touch seems to be getting slower and slower. It takes longer after I tap on pages to turn them, that's when I can even get the books on there to load.

I've tried hard resets and removing data, but the Kindle doesn't get any faster. Just now I tried to soft reset and i took about 3-4 minutes after I hit "menu" for the menu to actually come up. Eventually I have input so many touches that the Kindle gives up and chugs to a halt.

I am very disappointed by this, naturally. Has this happened to any one else?


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## Morf (Nov 18, 2010)

3-4minutes for a menu is unbelievably slow!

The first thing I would recommend is to check for any books that can't index - there are instructions in our FAQ here http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,73465.msg1187945.html#msg1187945 (the instructions are for a Kindle Keyboard but the steps should be obvious).

If you find any unindexed books then you need to remove them and re-download if you still want them.

How many books have you had on the Kindle? Although Amazon talk about capacities of thousands of books, it's been the experience of people on here that if you put a lot of books on (several hundred) and constantly add to or remove them, the Kindle will gradually slow down. (It's possibly to do with indexes that are left behind even when you remove books though I don't think anybody's sure).

I had my K3 (Keyboard) replaced by Amazon a couple of months ago because of case cracks, when the replacement arrived I was amazed at how much faster the new one was than the old one - though nothing like 3-4 minutes, maybe only 3-4 seconds.

When I'd copied across what I wanted, I did a "factory reset" on the old one, and it was then every bit as fast as the new one.

So, it may be that the only real cure is to copy off any non-amazon books, then do a factory reset on it. If it goes back to full speed (as I suspect it will) then you can download the books you want again, if it's still slow then I'd get straight on to Amazon to get a replacement.


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## SSJPabs (Mar 27, 2012)

Thanks to your advice, I was able to significantly improve performance.

I have put a TON of stuff on there, and very few of it are books I purchased from Amazon. I like to put manga on there as well as a lot of random academic research I want to go over. Most of these are in PDF format and some can run hundreds and hundreds of pages. Since I like to write for fun I also put a lot of my own work on there since I can proof read it more easily that way. I noticed that the more things I put on it, the slower it went so I started to periodically delete them. So I have a large archive of deleted things. 

I went through and deleted even more, copying most to my PC so I can re-upload them later. Then I ended up using Menu--Settings--Menu--Reset to Factory Defaults. Despite the message saying it would remove all my "downloaded or transferred content" from my kindle, it didn't. But it did make it speed up to normal speed and some non-Amazon PDFs and books I had on there that were quite sluggish now read as normal.


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## Morf (Nov 18, 2010)

Great, glad it sorted things out!

I'm curious, did some of your books stay on the Kindle, and were they Amazon or non-Amazon or both?

I thought that a factory reset deleted all non-Amazon books, and I think it deletes the Amazon books as well but then downloads them all again straight away.

If you start loading things back on it again, you may find your battery is used up more quickly because the Kindle will be re-indexing the books - if you do the "nonsense word" index check it will tell you if it's still indexing books.


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## SSJPabs (Mar 27, 2012)

Morf said:


> Great, glad it sorted things out!
> 
> I'm curious, did some of your books stay on the Kindle, and were they Amazon or non-Amazon or both?
> 
> ...


As near as I can tell, "Reset to Factory Defaults" (is that different than Factory Reset? I described the process I used above.) didn't remove ANYTHING from my kindle. Both non-Amazon and Amazon books stayed on the kindle. It just ran much faster. Maybe it deleted my bookmarks and annotations. I haven't loaded any books on its since, just a pdf of something I wrote myself to test it out. So perhaps it will re-index books I reload. I'll try it and update this post.


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## Linjeakel (Mar 17, 2010)

SSJPabs said:


> As near as I can tell, "Reset to Factory Defaults" (is that different than Factory Reset? I described the process I used above.) didn't remove ANYTHING from my kindle. Both non-Amazon and Amazon books stayed on the kindle. It just ran much faster. Maybe it deleted my bookmarks and annotations. I haven't loaded any books on its since, just a pdf of something I wrote myself to test it out. So perhaps it will re-index books I reload. I'll try it and update this post.


That's extremely odd. 

I've used the 'set to factory defaults' several times and it does just that - puts the Kindle back to the way it was when you bought it - it removes all content, both Amazon and other, and all personal details, such as wi-fi login details etc. In fact, that's exactly what it's for. I can't imagine it's any different on the Kindle Touch than it is on all the other Kindles. 

The instruction manual for the Touch says this about the Reset option on the Settings menu:-



> Reset Device: Resets your Kindle to its original factory settings and restarts it. You should
> select this action only if instructed to do so by Kindle Customer Service. Before you reset
> your Kindle to factory defaults, you must back up any personal documents as well as older
> issues of periodicals that you'd like to keep. Once your Kindle restarts, you will need to
> ...


If your content was still on the Kindle, it would seem like you didn't actually do a factory reset - and yet, it has improved the performance, so I suppose that's what counts!


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## Morf (Nov 18, 2010)

SSJPabs said:


> As near as I can tell, "Reset to Factory Defaults" (is that different than Factory Reset? I described the process I used above.) didn't remove ANYTHING from my kindle.


Yes, it's the same thing, I was just being lazy in typing! 

I've only done it once, on my old Kindle that was ready for return - it's not something you want to do to test! - it definitely removed all the books, but I think the difference may be that I unregistered it first then reset it. Maybe it behaves differently depending upon whether the Kindle is registered or not.

I suspect that the main thing it deleted were the indexes. Apparently the Kindle stores a master index for all the books (which effectively says "this word appears in this book") and then an index for each book saying this word appears in this book here, here, and here.

When you remove a book I think it deletes the index for the book, but doesn't delete the entries from the master index (this would probably be very complex to do). As a result, if you add and remove lots of books the master index becomes pretty big (Mine is about 5MB after only a short while, I've heard of them getting up to 100MB or more!) and therefore slows the Kindle down.

I've read that the Kindle deletes the indexes and recreates them occasionally (every 6 months or so) but I've not experienced this so I can't be sure.

There is a technique that Amazon occasionally recommend to clear the indexes (and therefore force a reindex) which you could always try in future if the Kindle seems to slow down again:



> "While it is not advisable to defrag your Kindles, they can be Indexed instead.
> Please follow the instructions below to re-index your Kindle.
> 
> Removing the index files on the internal memory. Steps for removal -
> ...


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## Morf (Nov 18, 2010)

Linjeakel said:


> I've used the 'set to factory defaults' several times and it does just that - puts the Kindle back to the way it was when you bought it - it removes all content, both Amazon and other, and all personal details, such as wi-fi login details etc. In fact, that's exactly what it's for. I can't imagine it's any different on the Kindle Touch than it is on all the other Kindles.


Linjeakel, I've been thinking about this and I looked back at this thread: http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,102070.msg1565046.html#msg1565046.

I'm wondering if Amazon have updated the setup on their servers now they are storing personal documents as well. The servers know which books are on the Kindle - both Amazon and personal.

What I think is happening is that when the Kindle is factory reset it deletes all the files, but because the Kindle is still registered to a user account it immediately connects to the servers and they send down all the books that were on the device before the factory reset.

SSJPabs...

Is your Kindle wifi only or 3G?
When you reset did you have to put your wifi password in again?
Were the books all there immediately or did they appear over a short period of time? 
Were the PDFs etc loaded via USB or did you email them to your Kindle.com account and get them that way?

Sorry to keep labouring on about something that you probably feel is fixed, but we enquiring minds here on KindleBoards like to understand what happens and obviously a factory reset isn't something we want to do just as a test!


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## Linjeakel (Mar 17, 2010)

Morf said:


> What I think is happening is that when the Kindle is factory reset it deletes all the files, but because the Kindle is still registered to a user account it immediately connects to the servers and they send down all the books that were on the device before the factory reset.


And yet it still says in the instructions I quoted:-



> ...Once your Kindle restarts, you will need to download your items from Archived Items on Amazon's servers...


It doesn't say "wait a short time and they'll come back". Also if they did all redownload, they'd be indexing again - and yet the OP says the performance improved - not something that would happen if it was re-indexing the whole library.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

I'll be the guinea pig.  I don't have that many books on my Touch.  And of course they can be downloaded again anytime.  Including the Harry Potter books....  

Betsy


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

OK, as a test, I just sent a personal document to my Kindle Touch using the "Send to Kindle" on my netbook, and the document was duly downloaded to "Buffy" the Kindle Touch. (My firmware is 5.0.4, by the way.)

Here's the blow by blow.

I went to the Home page > Menu > Settings > Menu > Reset to Factory Defaults

Tapping on "Reset to Factory Defaults" results in the following popup:

Reset to Factory Defaults
This action will remove all downloaded or transferred content from your Kindle. You will still be able to download archive items. Do you want to reset your Kindle?
No/Yes

Tapping on "Yes."

The "Tree Screen" "Please wait a moment while your Kindle starts up" appears.

fade to black and white and the Kindle tree screen appears.
Fade to black.
Tree screen with progress bar appears.
White screen.

And, voila! The Kindle User's Guide "Tip 1 of 3" appears.

Pressing the Home button.

All I have on my Kindle is the

Kindle User's Guide
The New Oxford American Dictionary
Oxford Dictionary of English
Archived Items (0)

Go to Menu > Settings > Registration and register the Kindle.

Now, my collections have been restored with zero books in them. Archived items climbing up to the prior 1076 total. The Kindle User's Guide, the new Oxford American Dictionary and the Oxford Dictionary of English that I have in a collection in other devices have been placed in the same collection.

Nothing else seems to be downloading. OMIGOSH WHAT HAVE I DONE!!! (Just kidding. Happy to test.)

So, my collections downloaded, the standard User's Guide and dictionaries downloaded but nothing else.

Betsy


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## Morf (Nov 18, 2010)

Hmm, interesting.

We'll have to see if the OP can add anything to the discussion...


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## SSJPabs (Mar 27, 2012)

Okay, so I tried it again. Menu -> Settings -> Menu -> Reset to Factory Defaults. Again I got the "this will erase your files" message. This time, I got the tree screen so the files were erased. It works as it should.

I swear that when I hit it before I did NOT get the tree screen. Maybe whatever was making the Touch slow interfered with the reset the first time. It's not a big deal. I didn't have much left on there anyway and this will enable me to put everything on there in a more organized fashion!  To answer the questions above: except for the books I actually buy from the Amazon store, I always load via USB from my PC (using Calibre). That includes the PDFs. I usually keep my Kindle from being connected to our wifi, and it wasn't connected to the internet at any time. At least, neither the 3G nor the wifi icon showed up at the top of the screen. 

Anyhow I backed up everything except what I already bought from Amazon, so I'll just go reorganize my stuff now.

Thanks for your help.

ED: And I have 22 academic research papers of history books in my collection! Frankly, I'm a bit stunned at the number.


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## Morf (Nov 18, 2010)

OK, that's interesting, thanks for carrying out the test.

It does sound like, for whatever reason, the factory reset didn't happen, maybe it just went through a restart rather than a factory reset (though you did say you'd done restarts in the past and it hadn't helped).

I'm a firm advocate of only keeping your "current" set of books on the Kindle - there are only about 60 on my new one whereas I had about 2-300 on my old one, and performance definitely seems better - plus it means that a factory reset will be less hassle if I have to do it.

I'm guessing from your other posts in other threads that you're a Calibre user, I tend to keep my main library of books there.

Anyway, at least now we know that a factory reset does what we always thought it did, and Amazon haven't been changing things when we weren't looking.

Thanks everybody for your tests!


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## SSJPabs (Mar 27, 2012)

Morf said:


> OK, that's interesting, thanks for carrying out the test.
> 
> It does sound like, for whatever reason, the factory reset didn't happen, maybe it just went through a restart rather than a factory reset (though you did say you'd done restarts in the past and it hadn't helped).
> 
> ...


I would hold down the power button and it would restart (bar under the tree) but the performance wouldn't change.

Right about Calibre, though I also use Mangle and Briss on occasion. That sounds like good advice about the books. I actually have a 900 page encyclopedia in PDF format on it right now but still have almost 3 gigs of space.


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## ericbenson81 (Mar 29, 2012)

Backup everything and try restore factory settings


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## Morf (Nov 18, 2010)

SSJPabs said:


> I would hold down the power button and it would restart (bar under the tree) but the performance wouldn't change.


Does the Touch have a menu option to restart like the K3 does? It's in the same menu as "restore factory defaults", and just says "restart". If it does, this is a slightly safer way to restart - we had a discussion about it a while ago and decided this is the equivalent of a "shutdown and restart" on a PC whereas the power switch actually interrupts power to the processor so is like pulling the power lead.



SSJPabs said:


> I actually have a 900 page encyclopedia in PDF format on it right now but still have almost 3 gigs of space.


It's interesting if you look (carefully!) around the Kindle disk, especially in the "system\search indexes" folder, you'll find that the indexes take up a significant amount of space - often the indexes are a fair proportion of the size of the books themselves.

Big PDF's aren't necessarily a problem, but their indexes can be.

If you add and remove books a lot, you could try the re-indexing solution I posted earlier from time to time, or a factory restore.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Morf said:


> Does the Touch have a menu option to restart like the K3 does? It's in the same menu as "restore factory defaults", and just says "restart". If it does, this is a slightly safer way to restart - we had a discussion about it a while ago and decided this is the equivalent of a "shutdown and restart" on a PC whereas the power switch actually interrupts power to the processor so is like pulling the power lead.


Yes, Morf, it does.

You access it from the Home page. Touch Menu in the top toolbar > Settings > Menu > Restart.

Betsy


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## jafTwo (Jan 12, 2012)

I new to using a Kindle (Touch) but I don't see the merit of storing a lot of books (on the Kindle.)  I have been using Calibre on my PC to maintain my library of ebooks.  I suspect deleting a book on the Kindle is a lot like deleting a file on a PC hardrive -- the actual data is not deleted; just the reference (index.)  But I  may be wrong, which wouldn't be unusual.


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## Morf (Nov 18, 2010)

I think you're at least partly right. The space used by the book will be marked as available for reuse.

I did mention above (but it's a pretty long thread so I'm not surprised you missed it!) that:



Morf said:


> ...the Kindle stores a master index for all the books (which effectively says "this word appears in this book") and then an index for each book saying this word appears in this book here, here, and here.
> 
> When you remove a book I think it deletes the index for the book, but doesn't delete the entries from the master index (this would probably be very complex to do). As a result, if you add and remove lots of books the master index becomes pretty big (Mine is about 5MB after only a short while, I've heard of them getting up to 100MB or more!) and therefore slows the Kindle down.


I'd certainly agree with your approach for books, on my first Kindle I had several hundred books, most of which I probably wouldn't ever read - this one, I've got about 60 and I'll probably keep it at that number or less.


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