My Firestick 4K that’s several years old died this morning. It was working last evening. This morning, all I get is a black screen. If I power cycle it, I get the boot logo and sound, however it takes much longer (probably close to a minute) before it goes away. When it goes away, I’m left with a black screen. After a couple of minutes, a message appears on screen saying that it can’t find the remote. I press the OK button on the remote and that message disappears, and I’m back to the black screen.
I tried doing a reset to Factory using the remote (hold back button & right directional for 10 seconds). After doing that, the reset dialog appears for about 2 seconds with OK or Cancel buttons. After quickly selecting OK, the screen goes black again and stays that way.
Any ideas on how to revive it, or is it “toast”?
Thanks
I had the very same problem this evening. I managed to reset on my third attempt. You need to be very quick when you get the prompt to do a factory reset, if you fail then it goes back to a black screen. If you can do it quickly enough, then the firestick will reset.
Throttlejockey & Pelops, thanks for the replies. I have already tried a new power brick, but that didn’t help. Pelops, it’s an odd coincidence that both of our sticks failed in the same way at nearly the same time. I’m glad to hear that the reset eventually worked for you. I thought that perhaps this condition made the stick not respond to that reset technique, but you experience shows otherwise. I tried it 4 or 5 times, but I’ll try it some more and see if I can get it to “take”.
You can try this(if not already) un plug the stick 10 mins, then put back in and hold the remote back button and right button at same time and if you get a reset prompt, follow through.
I tried one more time to do the reset using the remote and it worked! The stick restored itself to factory defaults and then updated itself. I still need to reinstall all my apps, however it seems to be working again.
Thanks everyone for your suggestions and help, particularly Pelops. I was about to give up on it yesterday, but Pelops saying that he had the same problem and had successfully revived it, made me try it again and this time it worked.
There has got to be something going on there at Amazon. I don’t believe in coincidences …Deja vu all over again. Perhaps a way to stop you from blocking updates? If you want it to work, the update is mandatory. How many people would have simply given up and bought a new stick?
I had the same thing happen yesterday. My work around was to use the Alexa button and say “my apps” and at least I could access all my apps. I still can’t get the home screen nor can I access settings but it’s better than a factory reset right now as I am out of the country on vacay.
I have a customer this happened on just today. Black home screen. Can use Alexa to launch apps, unable to access My Fire TV to see if there is an update that didn’t complete. But can’t do remote in, so have to wait until Monday to travel to his house and see what happened. Tried the power recycle, new batteries. Re-pair remote. So far nothing worked.
While my FS is still working after the factory reset, however I had a problem with another FS 4K belonging to a friend. I offered to clean up his stick, since his ex-wife had installed a boat load of apps and is no longer around (<1GB free space left). I reset it to factory, installed a 32GB flash drive, and installed some apps (VPN, Cyberflix, Cinema, X-Plore, IPTV app, etc.) Everything was working well (this was last week). A couple of days ago I plugged his FS back in to update Cyberflix to latest version. The stick suddenly started running extremely slowly. Cyberflix & Cinema wouldn’t load any posters, the IPTV app never finished loading.
I reset back to factory again. Now it wouldn’t recognize the flash drive after issuing the proper commands. Tried a couple of different OTG cables & flash drives, nothing.
Reset again, and this time I was able to install the flash drive. However after side loading the apps to the flash drive, it was running extremely slow again. Reset again and installed the apps directly to the FS (no flash drive installed). Everything seemed to be working properly. Friend came over today to pickup the stick. I unplugged my FS and plugged his in to show him how to use the apps I had installed. Launched the VPN first to show him about that, everything OK. I launched Cyberflix next, and no posters appeared. Pressed Home, and tried to relaunch the VPN. FS was running extremely slow again, and VPN failed to completely load.
Friend said he’s going to buy a new FS (4K Max). I wonder what is going on. All of a sudden it seems like a lot of people are experiencing problems with their FS that require resetting. I think Troy is onto something recommending Android devices instead of Firesticks. It’s too bad that the $20 Walmart ONN device is no longer available. That was a nice, inexpensive device. Does Troy have any recommendations for inexpensive Android devices?
It might be time for you to bite the bullet and buy a more expensive android box with at least 3-4 gbs of RAM and 32 gbs of internal memory that will at least give you the freedom to load whatever apps best fit your needs. Note that you don’t need anything recent than android 9 if you are getting your new device to just stream tv and movies. Both TXRon and myself recommend you look at Ugoos as they make excellent quality devices that give you maximum flexibility. There are UTube video reviews on several Ugoos devices that you can look at. I have had the AM6B Plus for the past 2.5 years and it works flawlessly.
@sim_bill, Thanks for the recommendation. I’ll look into it. For the time being, I’m satisfied with my Firesticks (all 4K models). However, if they start failing, then I’ll consider getting an Android device. I was pretty pleased with the the $20 ONN device except for one thing. I was using it as my living room device. However, a few months ago I subscribed to a new IPTV service. After installing their app, I lost the sound on the device (no audio from any app). At first I thought the device had died, but I tried a Factory Reset and that restored the audio. Installing my apps one by one and checking audio between each app install, I determined that the IPTV app was the problem. If it weren’t for that, I’d happily use the ONN device.
I lost the Amazon home screen for a while too. But I was happy I was delighted the only thing wrong with that is I lose I lost Alexis and I have spell out all my searches. I hate spelling I can’t spell it s p e l l i n g oh heck.
