Solved! Amazon Kindle Fire Boots to Account Registration Screen, no Back/Home Buttons

[smartypantsspencer]

My brother owns a Kindle Fire tablet that he uses nearly 24/7. He was playing on it today when he says that "Alexa" opened up. He didn't have an account linked to the tablet, and it opened up a screen to register/link an account to the Fire. However, the back, home, and program list buttons were missing.

He restarts the tablet, since he can't do anything, and it prompts his 4-digit pin. When entered, it opens the registration screen again. No back button, no home button, no program list.

He says that it usually allows him to leave registration menus. But now he can't leave it, and I'm not sure that I want to type in any information.

Generally, I would write this sort of thing off as nothing at all. Unfortunately, my brother is 11, and is completely oblivious. He was already infected with a piece of adware that randomly plays advertisements in the night, and one that puts ads on his home screen. He also just so happens to have an innumerable amount of suspicious programs installed; everything from free Minecraft skins to shady Cookie Clicker clones.

Considering these circumstances, would this behavior be suspicious, or is it just a fluke?

 

[volkgren]

Even if it was legitimate; resetting to factory default would be the best solution to avoid any possibility of spyware or malware and to clean up unnecessary programs.

 

[USAFRet]

Wipe and reset back to factory condition.

 

[Alabalcho]

Wipe and reset back to factory condition.

… and configure it as for 11-year old, with separate profile.

 

[screminmemes]

I highly recommend contacting Amazon Kindle tech support at https/www.amazon.com/contact-us (make sure you are logged in with the same account you want/have the Fire registered to.) They can try to troubleshoot the issue, then walk you through a factory reset if that doesn't fix it.

If you want to skip the phone call, you can hold the power button down until the tablet shuts off (ignore the on-screen prompt to shut down) and then hold the power button + either Volume Up or Volume Down (depending on the exact model.) This will launch the system recovery mode and you'll see several options, including an option to reset to factory defaults.