# Slow Kindle not helped by Rebooting or Turning off Wireless



## kvgf32 (Oct 1, 2011)

Hi -- was wondering whether anyone had any suggestions. I have the basic Kindle and have owned it for about 2 years. Lately it's gotten very slow in response -- almost all operations (such as going to home page) take about 10 seconds or so. One thing is that I send LOTS of online content to my Kindle via the 'Send to Kindle' app. I have about 1,000 articles residing on my Kindle and about 1,100 or so archived articles. Note that all these are short articles and I am NOT running short on memory (I show 785 MB free). 

Rebooting and turning off wireless don't seem to speed things up. Should I offload all these articles and put them on Calibre and start afresh? This is the only thing I can thing of that I haven't tried -- although I'm no expert on the subject. The other option is to purchase a new Kindle -- which I am considering anyway. 

Thanks very much for any help you can offer!

-Allen


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Did you long reboot or just restart?
Long reboot is where you hold the power button until it goes off completely.  Takes between 20-30 seconds.  
Unless you use those docs all the time, i would clean at least half out.  Even though the files are small, that is many files.  
Now I don't know if 785 mb free is good or bad.  Since i do not know how much memory a basic kindle has.  On my touch it would mean I am half full.  And on my keyboard about 1/4 full.


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## kvgf32 (Oct 1, 2011)

Thanks Cinisajoy -- I did a long rebooot. I am thinking I will try what you suggested -- offloading the articles. I have read that the database or list of files can be corrupted and that the slow or long reboot can fix this. But it didn't help in my case. Thanks for responding.

-Allen


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Your welcome.  Always remember the more files, the more the processor has to work.  Size is not always the primary factor.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Though Kindles have a specified storage size, I have found that when I get to the point where it's around half the stated capacity, things start getting sluggish. It's worse if there are more collections -- and with the cloud collections now, it can be a problem even if there aren't many books if you have lots of collections.

If a full reboot -- menu/settings/menu/restart or hold the switch for 40 seconds -- doesn't improve things, your only choice is probably to remove some books and/or collections.  Since you use Send to Kindle, everything you send is in your archive anyway, so you don't really lose anything

If that still doesn't fix things, you might want to contact kindle CS. If it's still under warranty they'll replace.  Even if not, you might get an offer for a replacement at a good discount. Then you have to just decide how much it bothers you.

But I really think taking some books off will help.  IF you want to do a clean sweep, reset it to factory conditions -- menu/settings/menu/reset to factory and start over.


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## kvgf32 (Oct 1, 2011)

Thanks Ann. I will try these things. If I do take it to factory reset can I choose which things to put back on the kindle? Does this include newspapers also? How do I do this? I subscribe to the NYT but am always a few weeks behind! Thanks Ann this is very helpful information for me. I am a Kindle-aholic...


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

If you do a factory reset, everything will go away, so you can then put back just what you want. And just what the collections you want -- though you may have a whole bunch they don't all have to be on any specific kindle.

For newspapers, look in your archive and see how many back issues are there.. .. . any that are can be re-loaded. Used to be they only kept a couple of weeks worth in the archive but I think they changed that. You can deliver a past issue by inputting the date into the 'deliver' pop up and it goes back quite a ways for my WaPo subscription.


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## HappyGuy (Nov 3, 2008)

Does Kindle index personal docs? If so, before doing a factory reset, you should probably do a search on a nonsense string, something like "vvhgftry". If your K is having a problem indexing a document it will show up in the list of documents not searched. You can then remove just that one and either not put it back on or re-download it.


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## kvgf32 (Oct 1, 2011)

Thanks Ann and Happy Guy! I am leaning towards factory reset. I got everything copied into Calibre. Will check the indexing to see if maybe there is a problem there.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

HappyGuy said:


> Does Kindle index personal docs? If so, before doing a factory reset, you should probably do a search on a nonsense string, something like "vvhgftry". If your K is having a problem indexing a document it will show up in the list of documents not searched. You can then remove just that one and either not put it back on or re-download it.


I believe so . . .and, good point: indexing can definitely be a problem if it's stuck on a glitchy file. I forget that because it's been so long since I've had the problem.


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## kvgf32 (Oct 1, 2011)

Hi again -- thanks to the three of you who had suggestions to help my slow Kindle. I did the factory reset and all is well now -- back to normal speed. So Ann you were correct -- even though computer memory not full the large number of docs was slowing down the device. There were no corrupt files although I did check for that as you mentioned Happy Guy. I was a little hesitant about the factory reset -- having never done it before with a Kindle -- but I was pleasantly surprised with how easy it is to get all the docs back on my device.

Take care and thanks all for your help!

-Allen


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## alicepattinson (Jan 27, 2013)

Maybe it's slow because you're memory is already low.


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## kvgf32 (Oct 1, 2011)

Alice -- from the 'free memory' stats that were displayed on my Kindle I went from about 60% of memory used down to about 40% memory used now -- that's based on 2gb of usable memory in my Kindle. That didn't seem low to me but I don't know much about the inner workings of the Kindle. I had around 1000 personal documents (Send to Kindle documents) so presumably the Kindle doesn't handle that number of documents very well. I downloaded those docs to Calibre and put back only a small fraction of them on my Kindle. The Kindle is back to normal speed now. 

-Allen


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Allen,

glad you could get it working again!

Betsy

_corrected the oopsie, LOL!_


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> Alien,
> 
> glad you could get it working again!
> 
> Betsy


  

I don't think he's an Alien!


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Glad you are back to fast.


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## kvgf32 (Oct 1, 2011)

Thanks again all for your help -- yes the Kindle is totally back to normal. I use it extensively to read articles and shorter pieces. I've had the Kindle for a little over two years and now have about 2000+ articles in my Archives. I also use K2PDF to convert PDF files and read them on my Kindle. Great stuff!


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

kvgf32 said:


> Thanks again all for your help -- yes the Kindle is totally back to normal. I use it extensively to read articles and shorter pieces. I've had the Kindle for a little over two years and now have about 2000+ articles in my Archives. I also use K2PDF to convert PDF files and read them on my Kindle. Great stuff!


You are welcome. 
I thought about the number of files because I went to do a complete virus scan on my computer a few months ago. I thought my emails were deleting every 30 days from Outlook. Virus scan was still running the next day and showing no end in sight. I looked and found all the files it was scanning. It took Outlook nearly an hour to delete the trash. Now I make sure to delete my deleted files at least once a week. And this computer I am using roughly 50% of my storage.


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