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Restoring Your Kindle

If your Kindle becomes bricked and you have a backup, then you can restore it as so:

This only works on Kindle’s which are 8th generation or OLDER, such as:

  • PW2
  • PW3
  • KT2
  • KT3
  • KV
  • KOA

This is because newer devices such as the KT4/PW4 have different partition layouts as well as secure boot, making it impossible to resture backed up partitions.

Prerequisites

  • A computer
  • Soldering and Electronics Expertise
  • A 1.8v Serial to USB Adapter connected to a Kindle
  • Software which can access the serial port installed, such as PuTTY

Restoring up your Kindle

  1. Make sure that PuTTY is installed
  2. Open a serial connection to your Kindle, the baud rate is usually 115200bps
  3. Boot the Kindle and interrupt the boot process by rapidly hitting enter until you see uboot >
  4. Once you see uboot >, boot into DIAGS by entering the command: boom 0xE41000
  5. Once you are in DIAGS, export the userpace partition by running the usb export command
  6. Then, copy your RootFS image file to the Kindle. Make sure you name it rootfs.img

    DO NOT FLASH THE KINDLE OR WRITE THE IMAGE TO IT DIRECTLY. Simply copy the image file to the Kindle

  7. Eject BUT DO NOT UNPLUG your Kindle
  8. Exit DIAGS mode by entering x at the prompt and enter a shell using the following command: exit login
  9. Now we will flash your RootFS image on the Kindle, simply run the following command: dd if=/mnt/us/rootfs.img of=/dev/mmcblk0p1 bs=4096
  10. Once it is finished, simply reboot the device via the reboot command

With any luck, your Kindle should reboot good as new!

Credits

  • Original guide written by Neon

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