Glo Kobo Glo frozen on powered off screen

[bluesteely]

Hi all,

I got a used Kobo Glo a few months ago and it was working fine. I didn't use it for a few weeks and decided to pick it up yesterday to read it, but it was frozen on the powered off screen (see attached). There are also some white and grey straight lines running across the screen, though I think they were always there (I'm not certain about this though).

https://ibb.co/VvnTVbB

The backlight works as normal and will turn off when I switch the device off (almost as if the device is working, it's just the screen is not showing anything). I have tried charging it (the LED flashes when charging), running it out of battery and charging it again, doing a reset with the pinhole, doing a factory reset ... And nothing has changed. When I try turning it on, the LED flashes like: blue, green, blue, green, green, green, green. I also opened up the Kobo to take a look inside, though from my (admittedly limited) knowledge it doesn't look like anything is wrong there (see image attached).

https://ibb.co/gZkHzbZ

My computer does not seem to recognise it being plugged in, though this has always been an issue and I may not have tried enough different USB cables.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Fat Abe]

The Glo model is a strange bird, almost a dinosaur in the history of Kobo readers. Mine was purchased in 2013 (from Amazon, of all places). It had a different kind of freeze problem- it froze in the middle of one epub file that may have been formatted funky. You know you have one of those when a paragraph is followed by a huge set of blank lines. When you flip to the next page, it has the another paragraph followed by white space. Why two straight pages with gaps between the paragraphs, at the end of a chapter?
Anyway, with such an old reader there seems to be a bug in the software that thinks the battery is 90% charged based on voltage, and not available current. This is when my freeze occurred, and no button press (even the 30 sec power off) would get it out of the zombie state. The backlit illumination was in the on state. I gave the reader a day to discharge, but even that was not enough for a recharge cycle, using a charger, to work. I nearly gave up and just plugged it into a PC with a known good USB cable. The unit responded with the screen for enabling PC connection or charging. Frankenstein responded. It was its wakeup call. This is strange behavior, but heck, if it works to revive this old reader, I'll take it.

[davidfor]

I read the first post, but, I didn't look at the date. I think I confused it with another in the last few days about issues starting and I did not have an answer for that. I have no idea why @Fat Abe thought that posting a response nearly two years after the original was a good idea.

Originally Posted by bluesteely

Hi all,

I got a used Kobo Glo a few months ago and it was working fine. I didn't use it for a few weeks and decided to pick it up yesterday to read it, but it was frozen on the powered off screen (see attached). There are also some white and grey straight lines running across the screen, though I think they were always there (I'm not certain about this though).

https://ibb.co/VvnTVbB

That suggests the screen is no longer working. Lines like that are usually because of a cracked backplane and show up on the display side to a lesser or greater extent. Unfortunately, e-ink screens are fairly delicate. And they can get damaged in ways that take a while to be seen. Think of a crack spreading across the windscreen of a car. It starts small will get longer as the car is driven, heated and cooled and

The backlight works as normal and will turn off when I switch the device off (almost as if the device is working, it's just the screen is not showing anything). I have tried charging it (the LED flashes when charging), running it out of battery and charging it again, doing a reset with the pinhole, doing a factory reset ... And nothing has changed. When I try turning it on, the LED flashes like: blue, green, blue, green, green, green, green. I also opened up the Kobo to take a look inside, though from my (admittedly limited) knowledge it doesn't look like anything is wrong there (see image attached).

That does sound like the device is starting but unable to update the screen. The LED patter matches what my Glo when I just restarted it. And that again suggests the screen is damaged and not updating.

https://ibb.co/gZkHzbZ

My computer does not seem to recognise it being plugged in, though this has always been an issue and I may not have tried enough different USB cables.

The PC does not see the device until you tell the device to connect. As you have done a factory reset, the device should be booting to the setup. You can try to find the buttons on the screen to get you to the point where it will connect to the PC. I have attached two photos I took of the my Glo during setup that should serve guide for finding the buttons. If you are successful, you would at least see the device from the PC.

If the screen is broken, it is probably time for a new ereader. The screen was always the most expensive part. When the Glo was first around, they could be more than 50% of the price of the device. An upgrade to any of the currently available ereaders will be a good upgrade.