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_MikeRichards_
Participating Frequently
September 14, 2008
Question

Sony Reader - Adobe Digital Editions DRMed books causing crashes

  • September 14, 2008
  • 41 replies
  • 11058 views
Hi,

Hopefully someone has seen this behaviour before and knows how to solve it.

I'm in the UK with the UK version of the Sony PRS-505 eBook Reader which runs software version 1.2.00.18050. I've installed the Sony eBook Library and the Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) software on Windows XP and they both worked perfectly. The 'free' books that came with the Reader install just fine as do free books from places like feedbooks.com.

However, when I want to buy a book, things go badly wrong. ADE sees the Reader and I can register it. I then tried to download a book from the Waterstones online store (Waterstones are the UK partner for Sony). The file transferred and looks fine inside ADE.

However, when I copied the file to the Reader's internal memory and unplugged it from the computer, things began to go wrong. The spinning refresh icon appeared and the Reader reset, rebooted, up came the refresh icon, reset, reboot - and so on and on and on...

I performed a hard reset on the Reader, re-registered it with ADE and tried installing the DRMed book on the SD card. After unplugging the Reader, it began to endlessly reboot just as before. Removing the card stopped the rebooting and the Reader behaved as normal. Delete the book from the card, plug it back in and the Reader is happy - so it's definitely something to do with the book or the DRM on the book. I've tried a couple of titles and each of them do the same thing.

After pleading for help on a mobileread forum, another UK user has had exactly the same problem. He has had his Reader exchanged for another one but that too is crashing when he tries to use DRMed content.

So has anyone here seen this problem? I'm completely stuck as Waterstones, from whom I've bought it are passing the buck to Sony and they are almost certainly going to pass it on to Adobe.

Any help would be HUGELY appreciated.

Thanks,

Mike.
    This topic has been closed for replies.

    41 replies

    Show previous replies
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    _DaveMagee_
    Participant
    September 16, 2008
    Peter,

    Just copying the book to eithier the internal memory or a SD card causes the reboot cycle as soon as you unplug it from the PC. I've also not been able to switch it off when it gets into the cycle eithier.

    I have activated another computer with the same account and had the problem and also created a second account on the same computer under a different user profile and had the same problem. I even got the sony store to swap the reader and as soon as I put the old memory card in the reader it started rebooting and this was with a fresh unactivated reader - I was expecting at least a this book it not activated message?

    It happens as soon as the reader reads the contents of the memory. for instance if it's on the SD card you see the reader show the number of books on the internal memory and then as it indexes the SD it pauses and just reboots.

    The books always work in ADE prefectly so I'm guessing this means all the authorisation has worked correctly?

    Regards

    Dave
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    _Peter_Sorotokin_
    Participating Frequently
    September 16, 2008
    Folks,

    I got access to some of the books that you mentioned and I do not see a problem in the books themselves.

    Mike, it would help me if I could get access to your copy of 'One Red Paperclip'. Can you give me an email address? Also, just to double check: simply copying that single book to the device or memory card causes Reader to start rebooting in a cycle, without you even trying to open it - right?

    Also, if anyone of you could try to activate another computer (or just a different account) with the same AdobeID and copy these crashing books there to see if they work in ADE, that would help me as well.

    Thank you!

    Peter
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    _JamesEdmond_
    Participant
    September 15, 2008
    Hi Peter,

    The book I'm having trouble with is "Nothing to lose" by Lee Child. It opens in ADE with no errors or warnings shown in the item info. I don't have any other DRM titles to test this with yet.

    thanks,

    James
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    _DaveMagee_
    Participant
    September 15, 2008
    Hi Peter,

    Can I say thanks for taking an interest as well! This is driving my rather mad!

    No, no problems when I look at the books in ADE,. Incidentally the books I have downloaded are "The confederation handbook" by Peter F Hamilton (from www.ebooks.com) and "Battlecruiser" by Douglas Reeman and "Use of weapons" by Iain M. Banks(from waterstones.com).

    I've use two different adobe & waterstones id's to download these to see if that helps and I've tried this on two different computers and two different readers with exactly the same problem.

    Regards

    Dave
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    _MikeRichards_Author
    Participating Frequently
    September 15, 2008
    Hi Peter,

    Thanks for the hands-on attitude - it's a real comfort to know that someone is on the case.

    I've checked Item Info... on 'Tales of Terror and Mystery' and 'One Red Paperclip' (they're the only ones I have on the machine in front of me at the moment); no sign of any errors in either the Mac or Windows version of ADE. Just:

    One Red Paperclip
    Kyle MacDonald
    Ebury Press
    Last Page: 21/201 Pages
    Last Read: Sep 15, 2008, 7:18PM
    Date Added: Sep 08, 2008, 7.26PM

    File path:
    C:\Documents and Settings\mr42\My Documents\My Digital Edi...

    Permissions set by the publisher
    Print Permissions: Not allowed
    Copy to Clipboard Permissions: Not allowed
    Document Expiration: Unlimited

    If I mailed you a copy of the file would that be of any use to you?

    Many thanks again,

    Mike.
    _
    _Peter_Sorotokin_
    Participating Frequently
    September 15, 2008
    Mike and Dave,

    Thank you for the info, it will help us to track it down. I'll see if we can get these books and figure out what's going on with them. It is highly unlikely that this is a transfer problem. DRM system is now designed in such a way that no re-encoding is required for the transfer: as long as your device is activated with the same AdobeID, your books should be readable on it. And in any case, even if the file is corrupted, it should not cause reboots. I suspect that there is something in these files (even before DRM is applied) that is exposing a problem in the reading software.

    One more question: if you look at the "Item Info" for these books in Digital Editions, do you see any error/warning messages?

    Thanks!

    Peter
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    _MikeRichards_Author
    Participating Frequently
    September 15, 2008
    Hi Peter,

    Like Dave I can confirm that the problem is caused by more than one book. I've only bought from the Waterstones store; but the titles in question are 'One Red Paperclip' by Kyle MacDonald, 'Song of Kali' by Dan Simmons and 'Tales of Terror and Mystery' by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

    In each case the titles are readable in the Adobe Digital Editions software on a Mac and on a PC, BUT they cause the Reader to crash.

    Hope that helps, please let me know if you need more information. Thanks for posting a quick reply.

    Mike.
    _
    _DaveMagee_
    Participant
    September 15, 2008
    Peter,

    The problem is it's not just one book. I have bought three different books from two different vendors (waterstones & ebooks.com).

    I've even tried different adobe ID's as well as hard resetting the device and I even got it replaced by sony but I still can't copy any DRM books from ADE to the reader without it constantly rebooting.

    I can however read the book in ADE on my PC. It seems to be the physical act of transferring a DRM book that breaks it.

    Dave
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    _Peter_Sorotokin_
    Participating Frequently
    September 14, 2008
    Mike,

    can you tell us which book did you purchase? It sounds that this particular book exposed some sort of a bug in Reader software. Most likely that book will need to be regenerated to work around that, but we'd also like to pin down the bug that causes this.

    Peter
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    _MikeRichards_Author
    Participating Frequently
    September 14, 2008
    Hi James,

    I started a forum here:

    http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=252589#post252589

    There's at least one more person going through the same problem as you and me. As you'll see from our discussion, we've tried a whole lot of things, so perhaps that will save you some time.

    I'm calling Sony in the morning to see if I can get any help.

    Mike.
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