Kindle 2 Recovery Mode
There is this undocumented feature of recover mode in Kindle 2. I’m posting about it but please don’t mess with it unless you know what are you doing because it can potentially brick your Kindle. K1 had an option of 100% wiping and reflashing the device to the origianl state. This option doesn’t seem to be present in K2 tough.
To enter Recovery Mode you need to hold the “Home” key while the device is rebooting when the screen flashes from black to white for a couple of seconds. If you see “Amazon Kindle” and boot progress bar – it’s too late and you need to reboot again.
When in recovery mode, you can hook up your Kindle to computer via USB and mess with the files just like in the normal mode. You can also press “1″ and this will initiate installation of update from the root directory of Kindle drive. However normal updates (2.0.1 and 2.0.2 as well as screensaver hack) don’t install this way – Kindle just ignores them. With a little tweaking I was able to get Kindle to see the update but it would still fail to install.
Pressing “R” key will reboot your Kindle 2 back into normal mode.
What is interesting is that when I called the number on the screen the tech didn’t know what “Recovery Mode” I was talking about.
This is not a whole lot of useful information yet even that I had to piece together from different places on the Internet when trying to repair my Kindle 2 myself. I eventually gave up and called the warranty.
If I figure out the “recovery mode update” trick I’ll surely post about it.
Actually, you can restart or recover your Kindle 2 from the Menu. You must first go to Menu and select Settings and then press the Menu key again. I did something unforeseen to the K2 software which caused it to behave erratically and was able to recover with a restart.
Your suggestion is a very useful one and I’ll keep it in mind if I get in trouble again experimenting with my K2.
I just lost permanent use of my kindle. It fell off the end table and it is unrecoverable. I called to find out what to do, the device is less than three months old, and was told that I could get a reconditioned kindle for $179. I can buy a lot of books for that. If the device is so sensitive it dies after dropping it, it is not tough enough to use anywhere but by your bedside. To me that is not very user friendly and I am very disappointed with both Amazon and kindle.
the comment is useless because the screen is frozen, it cannot be moved, nothing works. The Kindle is dead!!! I am out $359.
Margaret–Apparently, it’s not even safe by your bedside, since you say you dropped it off an end table. Things break when you drop them–it’s tough luck for sure, and I think I would cry if I broke my Kindle, but it’s not to be blamed on Amazon.
My kindle froze and I held the slider switch for about 20 seconds, and nothing appeared to be happening, so I clicked the Home button to see if I would get a response. I ended up at the screen described above, and just clicked “R” to get out of it. The kindle rebooted gracefully and all is well now. Thanks for the information.