Unbricking My Kindle Fire

smoen02 · Apr 21, 2012

About 3 weeks ago, I bricked my Kindle Fire. It was a "spare" that I had, so I started messing around with it. Got TWRP installed, downloaded a couple of ROMS, and attempted to install them. (fortunately, I made a backup of my base Amazon 6.2)

To make a long story short, the fire got stuck. I was able to adb and various other things on this forum to keep things going, but after a while, Kindle Fire Utility (adb, nothing) could see the device. I thought for sure I had an expensive paper weight.

Enter the factory cable. Because SkOrPn was in the middle of a move, my cable didn't get here right away. Then there were some issues with my PayPal address, which SkOrPn went out of his way to fix. Today, I got the cable at my office.

Looked at the cable. Thought I had been send an unmodified cable. Saw no evidence that anything had been done to the cable. An absolutely perfect professional job.

Couldn't wait to get home. Got home. Plugged cable in Fire, then in Laptop. Nothing. Now what? I thought it was supposed to boot the bootloader? adb didn't see the device. Drivers good, it sees my other Fire. I guess I was one of those 1% that hard brick the fire with no chance of getting it back.

Did a few searched on the forum. Found how to install TWRP on my device. I thought I had it already? Ran the commands. Nothing. Switched to regular cable. Nothing. I figured I was screwed. I unplugged the Fire. connected the factory cable. Ran the command. THEN hooked up the cable. JOY JOY JOY!! i GOT TWRP loaded!!!!

Restored my previously saved image, and now I have a working Kindle Fire. NOW i'm going to install some other ROM on it.

The moral is, never give up. Buy a factory cable!!! One of the things I've ever spent $15 or so on. And I recommend SkOrPn as your source. Quality work, great customer service!!!

Step-by-step
1) Make sure you have some charge left in your bricked Kindle. (one of my mistakes
2) Download "Kindle Fire Utility" or other utility that has the fastboot.exe command available.
3) Download twrp-blaze-2.0.0RC0.img (just google it)
4) Without connecting anything, run the command:
fastboot.exe -i 0x1949 boot twrp-blaze-2.0.0RC0.img
5) Connect the factory cable to your Kindle Fire
6) Connect the factory cable to you PC
7) Wait about 10 seconds.
8) DONE!!!!

Sorry for the long post. My wife doesn't understand why this would make me so excited. But you all would, I'm sure.

SteveM

chris_m128 · Apr 21, 2012

a very nice post for people who have bricked their kindles and need a factory cable!

SkOrPn · Apr 21, 2012

Thanks for the kind words Steve. I hope this cable gives you confidence in flashing your Kindle long into the future. Glad it worked out for you.

Oh, and you did not see any evidence of modification because I do not modify the cable, I just cut off the original micro connector and install my own, already modified of course with a resistor and all I have to do is re-solder the 4 wires back onto their original pins and then fill the entire casing with 400 degree SureBonder PDR Hot Glue (the worlds strongest known hot glue, according to them anyway lol)... That way it looks and feels like a true manufactured store bought cable. However, doing it my way is still in fact more work, but the end result clearly justifies it.

Anyway, again glad I could be of service to you and my fellow XDA friends.

The3rdEye · Apr 27, 2012

Where do I run the command from?

kinfauns · Apr 27, 2012

The3rdEye said:
Where do I run the command from?

http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=23747804&postcount=3

andersonrel · Apr 27, 2012

smoen02 said:
About 3 weeks ago, I bricked my Kindle Fire. It was a "spare" that I had, so I started messing around with it. Got TWRP installed, downloaded a couple of ROMS, and attempted to install them. (fortunately, I made a backup of my base Amazon 6.2)

To make a long story short, the fire got stuck. I was able to adb and various other things on this forum to keep things going, but after a while, Kindle Fire Utility (adb, nothing) could see the device. I thought for sure I had an expensive paper weight.

Enter the factory cable. Because SkOrPn was in the middle of a move, my cable didn't get here right away. Then there were some issues with my PayPal address, which SkOrPn went out of his way to fix. Today, I got the cable at my office.

Looked at the cable. Thought I had been send an unmodified cable. Saw no evidence that anything had been done to the cable. An absolutely perfect professional job.

Couldn't wait to get home. Got home. Plugged cable in Fire, then in Laptop. Nothing. Now what? I thought it was supposed to boot the bootloader? adb didn't see the device. Drivers good, it sees my other Fire. I guess I was one of those 1% that hard brick the fire with no chance of getting it back.

Did a few searched on the forum. Found how to install TWRP on my device. I thought I had it already? Ran the commands. Nothing. Switched to regular cable. Nothing. I figured I was screwed. I unplugged the Fire. connected the factory cable. Ran the command. THEN hooked up the cable. JOY JOY JOY!! i GOT TWRP loaded!!!!

Restored my previously saved image, and now I have a working Kindle Fire. NOW i'm going to install some other ROM on it.

The moral is, never give up. Buy a factory cable!!! One of the things I've ever spent $15 or so on. And I recommend SkOrPn as your source. Quality work, great customer service!!!

Step-by-step
1) Make sure you have some charge left in your bricked Kindle. (one of my mistakes
2) Download "Kindle Fire Utility" or other utility that has the fastboot.exe command available.
3) Download twrp-blaze-2.0.0RC0.img (just google it)
4) Without connecting anything, run the command:
fastboot.exe -i 0x1949 boot twrp-blaze-2.0.0RC0.img
5) Connect the factory cable to your Kindle Fire
6) Connect the factory cable to you PC
7) Wait about 10 seconds.
8) DONE!!!!

Sorry for the long post. My wife doesn't understand why this would make me so excited. But you all would, I'm sure.

SteveM

Hi there,

Where should I run that command from??

Here´s my case, I hope you could help me..

I need urgent help. Just got my kindle todasy and went through tutorial to use the rooting utitily. My kindle got stuck at loading screen and wouldn´t shut shutdown. I waited until the battery ran out. Waited for few more minutes and plugged in the data cable. The kindle now won´t stop blinking and does not get reckgonized by the pc. I did waited for the battery goes dead again, recharged then for about 30 min and nothing has changed. The loading screen keeps blinking and nothing seems to be happening. Please advise!!

kinfauns · Apr 27, 2012

andersonrel said:
Hi there,

Where should I run that command from??

Here´s my case, I hope you could help me..

I need urgent help. Just got my kindle todasy and went through tutorial to use the rooting utitily. My kindle got stuck at loading screen and wouldn´t shut shutdown. I waited until the battery ran out. Waited for few more minutes and plugged in the data cable. The kindle now won´t stop blinking and does not get reckgonized by the pc. I did waited for the battery goes dead again, recharged then for about 30 min and nothing has changed. The loading screen keeps blinking and nothing seems to be happening. Please advise!!

Oh boy... I'm going to hope that it was a timing issue and our posts got crossed, because I answered your question for another user just above your post.

Regardless, the answer to that question isn't going to help you. You need this...

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1621146

Never let your battery die like you did. You can always force a shutdown by keeping the power button pressed down for 20-30 seconds.

EDIT: I'd been meaning to post this guide for a while...

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1623244

and I missed the part of your post about being "stuck at loading screen" the first time I read it. I suggest you read this guide...

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1552547

make sure the device drivers are working (part 2) and learn some fastboot commands (part 3) so you can reset the bootmode on your device back to normal and reboot it.

andersonrel · Apr 28, 2012

kinfauns said:
Oh boy... I'm going to hope that it was a timing issue and our posts got crossed, because I answered your question for another user just above your post.

Regardless, the answer to that question isn't going to help you. You need this...

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1621146

Never let your battery die like you did. You can always force a shutdown by keeping the power button pressed down for 20-30 seconds.

EDIT: I'd been meaning to post this guide for a while...

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1623244

and I missed the part of your post about being "stuck at loading screen" the first time I read it. I suggest you read this guide...

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1552547

make sure the device drivers are working (part 2) and learn some fastboot commands (part 3) so you can reset the bootmode on your device back to normal and reboot it.

Thanks for your help. I tried to run a fastboot command and get msg: ´cannot run, adbwin.dll missing´... Now I´m really not sure what it´s missing anymore..
I´m going also leave it charging for longer and it seems to be a known issue, right?

My kindle continues not being reckognized and keeps on flashing the kindle Fire/Android Logo. When I unplug it it stops flashing and I won´t get any sigh of life, even after pressing the button for longer than 30s.

I managed to find the driver on device manager and uninstalled it, thinking that maybe it would help finding the device again, but it didn´t...

Recomendations please?

kinfauns · Apr 28, 2012

andersonrel said:
Thanks for your help. I tried to run a fastboot command and get msg: ´cannot run, adbwin.dll missing´... Now I´m really not sure what it´s missing anymore..
I´m going also leave it charging for longer and it seems to be a known issue, right?

My kindle continues not being reckognized and keeps on flashing the kindle Fire/Android Logo. When I unplug it it stops flashing and I won´t get any sigh of life, even after pressing the button for longer than 30s.

I managed to find the driver on device manager and uninstalled it, thinking that maybe it would help finding the device again, but it didn´t...

Recomendations please?

Unfortunately, if the device isn't booting up, it won't charge. Like the guide I posted above says, the device needs to load up a ramdisk before it will charge. If all you see is that KF/Android logo, then it's still in the bootloader and it's not charging your battery.

First, you'll have to get your drivers in order so you can send the device fastboot commands. I suggest you disconnect the KF from your computer and make sure it's turned off. Use the KFU driver install file and get it to install the drivers again onto your machine. I'm not sure if it will help, but it wouldn't hurt to reboot your computer after that. When it's back up and running again, open up the device manager. When you connect the KF back up to your computer, it should automatically power up again... look at what device comes up as it boots. The first thing you see (hopefully) is "Android Phone -> Android ADB Interface" appear. If you see that, you can be reasonably sure you can send it fastboot commands.

You'll have to issue the "fastboot oem idme bootmode 4000" on the command line. It will tell you that it's waiting for device... The next time it loops back around in its boot up process, it will send the command and hopefully get the bootmode back to normal. Then hook it up to your stock AC wall charger and if you are lucky it should continue to boot and charge your battery.

There's a lot of "hopefully" things that have to go right for this to work. You've got a few compounded issues that are giving you problems and all of them have to get fixed for the battery to start charging again.

soupmagnet · Apr 28, 2012

andersonrel said:
Thanks for your help. I tried to run a fastboot command and get msg: ´cannot run, adbwin.dll missing´... Now I´m really not sure what it´s missing anymore..
I´m going also leave it charging for longer and it seems to be a known issue, right?

My kindle continues not being reckognized and keeps on flashing the kindle Fire/Android Logo. When I unplug it it stops flashing and I won´t get any sigh of life, even after pressing the button for longer than 30s.

I managed to find the driver on device manager and uninstalled it, thinking that maybe it would help finding the device again, but it didn´t...

Recomendations please?

To fix the "cannot run, adbwin.dll missing", shift + right click on the folder containing adb.exe and select something like "Run as Command"

Sent from my Amazon Kindle Fire using xda premium

andersonrel · Apr 29, 2012

soupmagnet said:
To fix the "cannot run, adbwin.dll missing", shift + right click on the folder containing adb.exe and select something like "Run as Command"

Sent from my Amazon Kindle Fire using xda premium

I´m gonna try this and will post results. Thanks a lot.

andersonrel · May 1, 2012

kinfauns said:
Unfortunately, if the device isn't booting up, it won't charge. Like the guide I posted above says, the device needs to load up a ramdisk before it will charge. If all you see is that KF/Android logo, then it's still in the bootloader and it's not charging your battery.

First, you'll have to get your drivers in order so you can send the device fastboot commands. I suggest you disconnect the KF from your computer and make sure it's turned off. Use the KFU driver install file and get it to install the drivers again onto your machine. I'm not sure if it will help, but it wouldn't hurt to reboot your computer after that. When it's back up and running again, open up the device manager. When you connect the KF back up to your computer, it should automatically power up again... look at what device comes up as it boots. The first thing you see (hopefully) is "Android Phone -> Android ADB Interface" appear. If you see that, you can be reasonably sure you can send it fastboot commands.

You'll have to issue the "fastboot oem idme bootmode 4000" on the command line. It will tell you that it's waiting for device... The next time it loops back around in its boot up process, it will send the command and hopefully get the bootmode back to normal. Then hook it up to your stock AC wall charger and if you are lucky it should continue to boot and charge your battery.

There's a lot of "hopefully" things that have to go right for this to work. You've got a few compounded issues that are giving you problems and all of them have to get fixed for the battery to start charging again.

I tried to connect to a different pc. It does get recognized on device manager (as kindle) for few seconds and then it dissapears again...not sure what to do now in order to charge it...any suggestions?

djsaxon · May 2, 2012

Hey guys thanks for all the help so far, i bricked my kindle to the point of no shell after i tried to reflash the stock rom and was stuck in no mans land. So i ordered skorpn's factory cable (thanks again for sending it up north of the border) and when i plug it into the pc it loads the "kindle fire" screen ans stays there. It shows up in device manager but not when i look for it under adb devices and device won't be found in fastboot. Tried reinstalling the drivers and still no luck. Any ideas how i can get this thing back to the point of usability? Thanks for any help you have

soupmagnet · May 2, 2012

andersonrel said:
I tried to connect to a different pc. It does get recognized on device manager (as kindle) for few seconds and then it dissapears again...not sure what to do now in order to charge it...any suggestions?

Fix your drivers. Read this:

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=23747671

djsaxon said:
Hey guys thanks for all the help so far, i bricked my kindle to the point of no shell after i tried to reflash the stock rom and was stuck in no mans land. So i ordered skorpn's factory cable (thanks again for sending it up north of the border) and when i plug it into the pc it loads the "kindle fire" screen ans stays there. It shows up in device manager but not when i look for it under adb devices and device won't be found in fastboot. Tried reinstalling the drivers and still no luck. Any ideas how i can get this thing back to the point of usability? Thanks for any help you have

First, fix your drivers:
http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=23747671

Then:
http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=25400963

maw230 · May 10, 2012

kinfauns said:
You'll have to issue the "fastboot oem idme bootmode 4000" on the command line. It will tell you that it's waiting for device... The next time it loops back around in its boot up process, it will send the command and hopefully get the bootmode back to normal. Then hook it up to your stock AC wall charger and if you are lucky it should continue to boot and charge your battery.

Well I gave this a shot and it said: "finished. total time: 0.080s"

but it's still just flashing the android logo with kindle fire underneath.

soupmagnet · May 10, 2012

maw230 said:
Well I gave this a shot and it said: "finished. total time: 0.080s"

but it's still just flashing the android logo with kindle fire underneath.

That's because you have an entirely different problem.
http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=25400963

maw230 · May 10, 2012

soupmagnet said:
That's because you have an entirely different problem.
http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=25400963

Thank you.

jakelongryan · Jan 5, 2013

hey i can't doing that, when i type that code "fastboot..........img" cmd say <Waiting for devices> ?

soupmagnet · Jan 5, 2013

jakelongryan said:
hey i can't doing that, when i type that code "fastboot..........img" cmd say <Waiting for devices> ?

There are several reasons why you would get the typical "waiting for device" message, so...

...here is a step-by-step guide instruct you in getting it working properly, quickly and efficiently.

Step 1. Start a new thread in the Q&A section.

Step 2. Explain in GREAT detail exactly what your problem is.

Step 3. Explain in GREAT detail exactly how your problem started.

Step 4. Explain in GREAT detail exactly what you have done to remedy the situation on your own.

Step 5. Explain in GREAT detail exactly what the device does and everything you see from the moment you press the power button until the problem presents itself.

Step 6. Wait patiently until someone of appropriate knowledge is kind enough to lend a hand.

Remi85 · May 11, 2013

soupmagnet said:
There are several reasons why you would get the typical "waiting for device" message, so...

...here is a step-by-step guide instruct you in getting it working properly, quickly and efficiently.

Step 1. Start a new thread in the Q&A section.

Step 2. Explain in GREAT detail exactly what your problem is.

Step 3. Explain in GREAT detail exactly how your problem started.

Step 4. Explain in GREAT detail exactly what you have done to remedy the situation on your own.

Step 5. Explain in GREAT detail exactly what the device does and everything you see from the moment you press the power button until the problem presents itself.

Step 6. Wait patiently until someone of appropriate knowledge is kind enough to lend a hand.

great advice and exactly what im gonna do. been searching for 2 weeks now reading and learning and still stuck so be looking out for my thread

Unbricking My Kindle Fire

New member

Senior Member

Senior Member

New member

Retired Senior Moderator and Retired DC Lead

Member

Retired Senior Moderator and Retired DC Lead

Member

Retired Senior Moderator and Retired DC Lead

Retired Forum Moderator

Member

Member

New member

Retired Forum Moderator

Senior Member

Retired Forum Moderator

Senior Member

New member

Retired Forum Moderator

Member

Similar threads

Top Liked Posts