Windows 10 Computers Crash When Amazon Kindles Are Plugged In (theguardian.com)

It appears that many users are facing an issue with their Windows 10 computers when they plug in an Amazon Kindle device. According to reports, post Windows 10 Anniversary Update installation, everytime a user connect their Amazon Paperwhite or Voyage, their desktop and laptop lock up and require rebooting. The Guardian reports:Pooka, a user of troubleshooting forum Ten Forums said: "I've had a Kindle paperwhite for a few years no and never had an issue with connecting it via USB. However, after the recent Windows 10 updates, my computer BSOD's [blue screen of death] and force restarts almost as soon as I plug my Kindle in." On Microsoft's forums, Rick Hale said: "On Tuesday, I upgraded to the Anniversary Edition of Windows 10. Last night, for the first time since the upgrade, I mounted my Kindle by plugging it into a USB 2 port. I immediately got the blue screen with the QR code. I rebooted and tried several different times, even using a different USB cable, but that made no difference."

Comments

Even tried a different USB cable

[Anonymous Coward]

Best results will be obtained by using Monster (tm) brand USB cables.

Re:Lets...

[npslider]

Did you try rebooting your speakers?

Constant Development = Totally Unstable

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 10 is absurdly unstable because it's under constant development. One day your computer is working, the next they decide to do an update and break everything. Of course, instability is just one of the major problems with 10. An equally big problem is that it has no customisation options and gives you no control.

I had Windows 10 on four PCs and I wasn't happy with it, but I thought I'd have to upgrade at some point anyway so I was sticking with it. However, when the Anniversary Update came along and completely destroyed my computers I moved them all back to 8.1. The Anniversary Update is an update in name only, and the reality is that it is a completely new installation of Windows. It downloads the 4GB image, does a clean install (renaming your current one to windows.old) and then tries to transfer your programs and settings across. It fails utterly at doing this and afterwards it's not a case of "what's broken?", more like "does anything still work?"

Windows 8.1 is supported until 2023 so I've got that long to switch to Linux. After all the trouble reinstalling 8.1 on all my computers I wouldn't consider installing 10 again. Windows 10 gets a lot of criticism around here, but I suspect most of the criticism comes from people who haven't actually use it. If you do use it the reality is far worse.

Seems to be fixed?

[Esteanil]

I had this problem. After installing the Anniversary update, plugging my Kindle Paperwhite into the USB port would bluescreen Windows about half the time.

There were more updates yesterday, and I've plugged in the Kindle several times today without anything bad happening.

Re:Seems to be fixed?

[Anonymous Coward]

My take is, no. It's not ready for prime time at all. It may never be, because it's a constantly moving target. Unlike every prior edition of Windows, with 10 you can't lock-in a working system with known good drivers. You wake up one morning and suddenly your computer is broken because Microsoft decided to push an update, and there's no option to decline it. Microsoft broke millions of peoples' webcams last week with a botched update and they still haven't fixed that. Meanwhile they're pushing more updates causing more new problems and more pain.

The SDLC concept for Windows 10 seems to be:

• * Insiders are the alpha testers, but at least they volunteered for that.
• * The general public are unwitting surveillance subjects and beta testers. Microsoft will Do The Needful to your computer whether you want it done or not. These mandatory patches can make your computer stop working, blue screen, lose data, or somehow fuck up previously perfectly working peripherals at any time. You can't decline a patch even if you know in advance it's going to fuck you up!
• * Only Enterprise users get the finished product and they have to pay through the teeth for that privilege. Whatever patches didn't fuck up millions of consumer PCs may eventually make their way here.

Add in the telemetry/spying and there's just no way. Windows 10 isn't worth it. The only winning move is not to play.

Re:Lets...

[sirber]

You can: choose Linux.

Study finds that 75% people pushing Linux on others aren't actualy using Linux.

Re:Lets...

[Lisandro]

I am not. This is an update for the most widely used OS in the world which reboots when one of the most popular consumer devices available is plugged in. How exactly should it not be a story?

Take action

[karmawarrior]

I'm probably not the only one here who's getting sick and tired of hearing about yet another major Windows bug that we can't do anything about. While Microsoft makes their operating system even less stable, update to update, it also makes it harder for us to even pick the updates that we know work and leave those we don't aside.

That's a serious problem, and downtime due to computers crashing, needing to be reformatted and their operating systems re-installed, together with the time taken for users to learn about these problems and investigate workarounds, costs the world economy trillions every year. In this case the user loses whatever functionality lead them to wanting to plug a Kindle Fire into their Windows PCs in the first place, again having a real cost associated with it.

Yet while we waste time waiting for our computers to reboot, we feel helpless, unable to investigate workarounds or other ways to achieve the results we want.

This quagmire of people being unable to fix the problems caused by bugs and other issues will not disappear by itself. Resources need to be devoted, and unless people are prepared to actually act, not just talk about it on Slashdot, nothing will ever get done. Apathy is not an option.

You can help by getting off your rear and writing to your congressman or senator. Tell them your concerns about bugs in Windows 10. Warn them that trillions of dollars are being lost because of these issues. Tell them this is important to you. Tell them that you appreciate the work being done by organizations like Microsoft and Amazon to fix the bugs, but that without better QA and more reliable drivers, you will be forced to use less and less secure and intelligently designed alternatives. Explain the concerns you have about freedom, openness, and choice, and how vicious, angry, arguments undermines all three. Let them know that this is an issue that effects YOU directly, that YOU vote, and that your vote will be influenced, indeed dependent, on their policies on bugs in Windows 10.

You CAN make a difference. Don't treat voting as a right, treat it as a duty. Remember, it was thanks to ordinary people like YOU that we are now seeing such innovations as SMP in OpenBSD. Keep informed, keep your political representatives informed on how you feel. And, most importantly of all, vote.

Re:Take action

[hairyfeet]

What were you smoking? Win2K Pro was a fucking GREAT OS, rock solid, no eye candy bullshit, it just did what a great OS should do which is STFU and get out of the way so you can run your programs. XP was Fisher Price trash for kiddies, XP X64 (which was really Win 2K3 Workstation, MSFT got wind of so many of us turning 2K3 into desktops they just decided to sell it) was a damn fine OS, 7 is still a kick ass OS, and 8/8.1 is a good OS IF and ONLY IF you strip out the crapstore and spyware garbage and slap on Classic Shell, otherwise its UI will irritate the hell out of you.

But one thing we can all agree on is this...Windows 10 is trash. That is all it is, its trash. It gives you NOTHING better than the previous OSes, even its touted "features" are nothing but datamining trojan horse shit, takes away your ability to keep busted updates (which appears to be damned near a weekly thing with that POS) from being installed, has fucking ADWARE baked into the damned thing, has made BSOD a common condition again which I thought had died with XP, there is honestly not a single positive I can say about that piece of garbage.

Taking Care of the Competition

[Sperbels]

Does this mean MS has a competing e-reader coming to market?

Re:Signed drivers?

[squiggleslash]

So you're saying there's code in there along the lines of:

void usb_insertion_handler(string vendorid, string modelid, usbcontext context) {
. Driver d = DriverDB.find("usb/" + vendorid + "/" + modelid);

. if(d.signed()) {
. . d.load();
. . d.init(context);
. } else {
. . // alert("Driver not signed, device inserted in " + context.description + " cannot be used at this time"); -- 02/03/16 ska - not Microsofty enough

. . // Events.WriteEvent("usbsubsystem", "Driver unsigned, not loaded 0x80039193"); -- 02/10/16 jrh - good, those idiots will probably search for that number, sucks to be them when there's nothing on our website about it, hahahaha! -- 02/11/16 ska - not good enough, try again

. . System.BSOD(); // Crash, because clearly there's no better way to handle this problem
. }
}

Re:BSOD and QR Codes

[cdrudge]

Save 10% on your next forced free* upgrade.

* - Free as in without additional cost as long as you don't value your time, privacy, freedom, stability, or ability to control your system

Doesn't crash for me

[en4ca]

TFA makes it sound like this affects 100% of users, but it doesn't seem to affect me. Just tried plugging my kindle voyage into my windows 10 laptop running the anniversary update. Worked as normal, no bluescreen here.