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If your Kindle is running slow, freezing, or otherwise giving you trouble, your first step should be to restart it. Here's how---and how to fully reset your kindle if rebooting it doesn't work.

How to Restart Your Kindle

There are a couple of different ways to restart your Kindle. If it's working normally, the simplest way is to hold down the Power button (the one on the bottom of the device you use to unlock the screen) for about 10 seconds.

kindle power button

When a dialog box pops up, tap "Restart," and wait a few moments while it goes through the rebooting process.

kindle restart pop up

Alternatively, if your device is unresponsive, you can hold down the Power button until the screen flashes and the reboot process begins---about 40 seconds.

Finally, you can also restart your Kindle from the menu. On the Home Screen, tap the three little dots in the top-right corner.

kindle meny button

Tap "Settings" in the menu that appears.

kindle settings button

Tap the three little dots again, and then tap "Restart."

kindle restart option

How to Reset Your Kindle

If a restart doesn't fix your Kindle (or you want to return it to its factory state before selling it or gifting it), then you need to do a full reset. This will remove all the books, audiobooks, and other files that you've downloaded, reset any settings that you've changed, and put your Kindle back in its original, factory-default software state.

Before performing a full factory reset to fix the problems, you may want to ensure that your Kindle is running the latest version of Amazon's Kindle firmware. Firmware is a type of software for devices like this, and these software updates can fix problems.

On the Home Screen, tap the three little dots, and then go to "Settings."

kindle settings option

Tap the three little dots again, and then tap "Reset."

kindle reset option

Tap "Yes," and wait while your Kindle reboots.

kindle reset dialog

When it starts up again, it will be like a fresh Kindle. You'll need to log in to your Amazon account and re-download all your books.