But Seriously...

Remove The Ads From Your Kindle

I bought the $80 Kindle as soon as they announced it. I had been thinking about it for a little while, and at that price point I couldn’t resist. It’s been great, and I didn’t mind the ads at first but they started to bug me. I started searching online and found quite a few instructions for removing them but they all only had a partial solution; the ads went away but it would only show the default screensaver and would sometimes display an error message. Then, I found a comment on Geek.com’s tutorial that had a method which basically converted it to a regular non ad-supported kindle; no error messages, and rotating artwork as the screensaver. It worked perfectly on mine, and it also works with the kindle touch as well. Here are the instructions (for Windows, although a similar method probably works on Mac):

Backup Your Files

1. Connect the Kindle via USB to your computer.
2. Access the Kindle drive and copy the Documents folder (this contains your books), and any other files you want, on to your computer.
3. Unplug the Kindle from the computer.

Reset to Factory Defaults

1. Press the Menu button and select Settings.
2. In the Settings screen, press Menu again and select Reset to Factory Defaults.
3. Select ok on the warning popup.
4. After a few seconds, the Kindle will restart itself.
5. When the Language Selection screen appears, choose your desired language.
6. When the Set Up Your Kindle screen appears, stop, and do not go any further yet.

Show Hidden Files and Folders on Your Computer

1. Navigate to Folder Options. On Windows 7, it’s in the Control Panel.
2. Click on the View tab.
3. Click the radio button next to “Show hidden files, folders, and drives”, and un-check “Hide protected operating system files”.

Prevent the Ads

1. Re-connect the Kindle to your computer.
2. Access the Kindle drive and put the Documents that you previously copied to your computer, back in to the Kindle.
3. Open the System folder on the Kindle.
4. Right click anywhere in the folder and create a new text document. Enter “a.txt” as the filename.
5. Hold down Shift, and right click. This time select “Open Command Window Here”.
6. In the command window, type this exactly, “ren a.txt .assets” and press Enter.
7. Right click on the .assets file and select Properties.
8. Check the Read-only check box and close the Properties dialog.
9. Eject the Kindle from your computer and disconnect it.
10. Complete the Kindle setup.

And that’s it! No ads. You can confirm this just by putting the Kindle in standby, it should show some sort of picture instead of an ad.