My Firesticks are acting up..losing Homepage, losing heading, losing apps, Freevee is on/off, etc etc

All of a sudden my Firesticks starting doing screwy things. Can’t connect to Home, Freevee not working right, other apps.working oddly, It’s as if there is a virus causing havoc but I’ve run Virus Total and Defsquid and it says there are no viruses. I have to keep restarting the Firestick to get it to work again. It won’t use Alexa to change input sometimes, it won’t allow me to get into some apps at times. Just down right FRUSTRATING. HELP!!!

BTW: I even reset back to Factory Settings and in a short time the problem was back.

Sounds virus like but maybe not and im really surprised defsquid didnt detect everything as a virus :face_with_monocle:.

Is it over heating at all? that is often a cause of strange happenings. Also how much free storage do you have? If you are getting low that could cause problems.

Try force stopping all apps one by one and re-booting…and check.

Thank you for replying. It is not overheating, and I have plenty of storage. I force stop and clear cache every app before shutting down. I’ve done 2 factory resets and don’t use my previous apps to reinstall. Everything works fine for a while and then it starts acting up again. I just installed Total Commander and am looking for something called ‘Test’ (ADB.Miner) but the only thing I saw that looks like the ‘Test’ icon is related to Alexa. I’ve been working on this for days and I think I’ll just buy 2 more Firesticks and dump these. I just got Surfshark a few hours ago so I’m hoping it helps. I did have a virus that I deleted that was caught by Defsquid but I uninstalled it. I’m fried for sure.

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Could just be a stick going bad. If a virus was present often just removing them doesnt fix the damage done. Also I wouldnt trust defsquid with anything…but thats just my take. Be careful of where you get apps as even trust sites get infected malware as the playstore has proven time after time.

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No kidding? You can get infected apps from the Playstore? Oh geezz. I was doing just fine for years and then all of a sudden. I don’t know if this happened but I’m thinking that an update to an app may have triggered this. I did visit some less than trustworthy websites but I didn’t download anything. Only thing is, if it is that ADB.miner virus, it says it can spread to a Smart TV. Gulp!

believe it or not you can get a virus from a picture. I usually if possible like to get my apps from the source. Surfshark for instance I download from their site.

But if I was to guess, the issues you stated I would still say its a heat issue, Its very common in sticks.

But Both of them on different TVs. at the same time?

same brand/model? Do you have any other android device you can test.

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They’re both Samsung but one is Smart TV and the other isn’t. Like what type of android?

I meant device other than the firesticks…

A phone and a fire tablet.

need to pick up a cheap backup for just this reason, to rule out a problem. cyber monday has a few hours left and firesticks etc are cheap.

I might do that. I’m going to reset one more time under a different profile name and introduce one app at a time and see what happens. Only thing is, if the virus is in the operating system, then there’s not much I can do. The Firesticks don’t have the anti-virus apps to root it out like a computer. One thing though, when it resets back to factory settings there still has to be some kind of programs left on the Firestick to make it operate so it may never get destroyed. Oh well, I thank you for your assistance and wish you Happy Holidays.

You are welcome. One other thing you can try is change cables and check(if you havent already) Have a great night.

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I’ve been having similar issues with my 2 firesticks for a week or so. Maybe a bad stick update from Amazon? I’ve been having problems getting kodi to open. Very frustrating to say the least

Can also be your VPN acting up. Make sure you do not have it set to disconnect completely if you loose VPN.

And also make sure you have at least 1.5 gigs space left internal.

Very frustrating indeed. So far one firestick has been working for the last 2 days but when I’ve done a restart it will work for a while then act up again. I did switch from IPVanish to Surfshark yesterday, but I don’t know if IPVanish was the problem, but it did have a recent update. I thought I may have gotten a virus from a bad website but I installed a new Firestick on someone else’s TV and it started doing the same darn screw ups. I hadn’t gone to any bad websites, but I did install IPVanish sooo??? I’ve reset back to factory twice and ran tons of updates so I’m not sure about a bad Amazon update. I guess time will tell. Enjoy your Holidays.

Thank you for replying. Actually, you may be right about the VPN. So far today, it seems to be working but I did switch from IPVanish to Surshark yesterday. IPVanish did have a recent update but I have no idea if that was the problem. I usually force stop and clear the cache in settings before I shut down.so I don’t think space is a problem. I am new to Surfshark so I don’t know if there are any settings I need to adjust prior to using it because I didn’t do anything but hit quick connect. I have Pluto playing right now and it just went back to Homepage without me touching the remote, however, I fell asleep with it running on Pluto for a long time…would that cause it to do that? Enjoy your Holidays!

Join the club. There are all sorts of FireTV OS users getting issues. Most are similar and have a common thread. Apps suddenly doing things they’d never done before. Internet connection issues. VPN suspected in a lot of cases, although that is pure speculation. Random connections interrupted. Well as you can see it seems to be focused on 3rd party apps although that may be only in my case. Some Max users can connect to a specific site, others can’t. The list is growing. I think it’s going to take a few days before we know, or better yet, it’s just another epic update failure and when it’s fixed, we can all go back to our happy life of cutting the cord. I almost forgot, some can access streams and others can’t. I guess we could add that one to the list of internet anomalies.
Have fun and STREAM ON!