My kindle isn't switching on?

For me none of the restart approaches helped. The ad was still displayed on the screen, the display light did not go on, nothing happened. The one and only thing that worked for me was to put on the USB cable and charging the device, which I did all night. Hint: The power LED to the side of the connector must turn on while charging, if not, you may have a bad cable.

After having the device charged, I still couldn’t turn it on. So I tried all the restart possibilities described (push the button for 7s, 40s, 45s, 60s). All the descriptions tell to unplug the device before restarting it. After nothing worked I connected it to a power source (my laptop) again and pushed the button for a long time again and after letting it go the display light went on and the ad changed to the battery symbol with the “!” mark on it.

I think now it’s charging.

I think it’s a common fault on the Paperwhite. I’ve just taken mine apart and replaced the power button flexistrip; not really a job for anyone who doesn’t dabble in electronics regularly.

But before that, I used this ‘workaround’: Plug it into a computer via USB. On mine, this bypassed the power button and it came on. I then ‘disabled’ the sleep mode so that it stayed on by entering ~ds in the search box. By turning the brightness down when I had finished reading, it stayed on for quite a few days before needing re-charging but at least I could read my book! If it went flat, I could just repeat the process.

The ‘button’ appears to be a very thin piece of ‘foil’ behind a gel pad which is pushed in by the black rubber button that is visible. The foil, when pressed in, touches two metal pads thereby activating the circuit. In mine, there appeared to be some black residue or dirt between the foil and the pads so they were not being connected. Some Isopropol Alcohol spray cleaned it sufficiently to make it work but then I managed to destroy the flexi-strip so had to fit a new one.

I had the same problem of not being able to reopen a paperwhite. Tried all the usual methods to no avail so plugged it into my PC. It showed up in Explorer with all its contents which I download to my PC as a backup. Unplugged the Kindle and restarted it. The Kindle response was slow so I did a full power down by holding in the power button for a few seconds and now it is functioning correctly. (Fingers crossed)

My paper white is new it’s charged but won’t open

i did everything - resetting, charging overnight, plugging into the computer... but the light stays completely off and the screen froze on 'low battery'. it seems it is truly dead, any advice?