Kindle problems

Over the past few weeks, I've been having problems with my Kindle. The first thing that I noticed was that the battery seemed to be running down very fast. Previously I used to charge the Kindle once every few weeks, but now it seemed as if I had to charge every day. Last week I went to Haifa on the train; the Kindle was frequently warning me that its battery was running low and at one stage it simply turned itself off and refused to turn back on. 

I wanted the Kindle to be in top condition in order to download from Amazon the new Inspector Banks novel, "Abattoir blues".  

Obviously I charged the Kindle overnight but it seemed that the charge wasn't holding. When I started researching this, one of the suggestions was to turn "airplane mode" on, so that the Kindle wouldn't waste battery power looking for wi-fi networks. I suspect that this mode was not on beforehand, for when I turned it on, I noticed the icon of an airplane appeared on the screen. 

I also noticed that the Kindle appeared to have no MAC address; without this, it can't connect to the Internet which would mean that I wouldn't be able to download the book. I started googling how I could solve this problem and eventually I found the answer. I'm going to document how I solved the problem here, in case it happens again.

Problem: Wi-Fi MAC Address: Unavailable.

1. I backed up the entire 'documents' directory of the Kindle onto my computer. Amazon believes that the entire contents of the Kindle were purchased via Amazon, but in my case, almost all of the books stored came from other sources.
2. I set the Kindle up to require a password.
3. I rebooted the Kindle by pressing on the power switch for about 30 seconds. When the Kindle rebooted, I entered the password which I had just defined and checked to see whether  rebooting had restored the MAC address - no.
4. I rebooted again but this time entered the magic password 'resetmykindle'.
5. After a few minutes, the Kindle came back to life and asked for details of my wireless connection.

Success! Of course, I didn't have the password to my mobile internet router handy so I couldn't continue redefining the Kindle. At work, I found the password (and wrote it down in my new notebook); I came home, turned on the router and the Kindle and began redefining. Once connected, the Kindle restored the names of the books which I had bought from Amazon; I had to download them myself (a painless process lasting a few seconds in each case). I then purchased the Inspector Banks novel and that got downloaded too.

I am now restoring the backup from my computer. I will have to rebuild all the collections, but that's a small price to pay. I have ensured that 'airplane mode' is turned on and I will religiously charge the Kindle after every use.

[SO: 3590; 2, 13, 35
MPP: 449; 0, 1, 6]