New Zenpad blank and not working

[jkingrph]

I just received a new 580 ca, put in a sd card and started setting it up. I got as far as the email setup and the screen goes black. Now all I can do is turn on or off, or restart. I get a ASUS logo for a minute then everything is black, any ideas??

 

[nrseife]

I am not sure about a completely black screen, but sometimes my zenpad crashes so bad that I have to restart several times until it successfully starts up. In the cases where booting fails the asus logo stays for ever and after a few minutes I restart again until it works. I believe that is a firmware issue. Btw, the number of restarts varies....sometimes after 2nd one, sometimes 6 or so. Luckily this happens only once a month or 2. If after 10 times it does not work I would boot into the droid menu (forgot what it is called): Press Volume UP + Power Button for a few secs, then select (with vol up and down) factory reset and press the power button to select that choice. If that fails to boot, you probably have a defective unit....good luck and let us know what happened.

 

[jkingrph]

Thanks, I will give that a try. As I said this is a new, fresh out of the box unit, totally unused. I sent e mail to ASUS support and B&H photo where I purchased it, but it is weekend and have not gotten a reply.

 

[jkingrph]

Thanks again. That got it working, I had no idea how to reset. I installed the kindle app, but right now it shows books in the cloud, and a couple on the device, but will not download any or open so will wait overnight and see what happens. At least I got it on,

 

[nrseife]

Did you have to hard reset or just tried to boot a dew times? Good to hear that it worked. Re the kindle app, make sure the tablet (name is under settings, first item) is supported in your kindle account and refresh the content....should start within a few minutes....

 

[jkingrph]

I went to amazon, manage content and devices and it shows there as registered. I had seen that there was a more current version of the Kindle app than it downloaded, but had trouble finding it, Finally I found a way to update that and it is now showing books as downloaded but they are not opening, I don't know if it is Kindle or the Zenpad. It looks like this one will be a long learning curve, comeing from an obsolete Kindle reader

 

[jkingrph]

I did the factory reset. How do you do a simple reboot? I had seen where there was a more current version of the Kindle app, but could not find it from Amazon, so went into the app on the Zenpad and got to an update from the help section. After that it is showing the books as downloaded, (with the check mark) but right now they will not open, so do not know what is going on.

 

[jkingrph]

I did the factory reset.
For the future, how do you do a reboot. The kindle app was not working, so I found an update and that got it to downloading books, and finally one opened to read. It seems to have taken it a bit to catch up on things, but looks good now.

It's strange, when I started typing this, something was making letter entry extremely slow, even skipping letters as I typed, now all of a sudden it's back fast and normal. I have been skipping to some other interest forums and did not see the same problem, so am thinking something must have really slowed this one down for a few minutes.

 

[nrseife]

A normal reboot can be done from the droid menu I described above (should say reboot or similar), or by pressing and holding the power button for about 10 sec. This you need to do only if the tablet crashed and nothing works anymore.
Otherwise just press the power button for 1-2 sec and a menu will pop up....to restart, power off or go into airplane mode.
You can also factory reset when you go to settings - > backup & reset (wirks not uf tablet crashed if course).
I recommend normal power down/reboot every couple of days.
Kindle: go to the kindle setting menu (upper left corner) and click on "On Device" to see what/if has been downloaded

 

[nrseife]

One more....you tablet probably slows down because things are still downloading/setting up in the background after the factory reset? Once this is done it should be a fast/responsive tablet. Also, after a while (a few days w/o reboot) a normal reboot helps to keep things smooth.....btw, I never had to factory reset after I purchased it back in November. Next time probably when/if we get Android 6 (I certainly hope we will...)

 

[jkingrph]

I gave it 24 then 48 hours, and it still would not work properly, with the reading app I wanted it for, so got a return authorization and sent it back today.