My dad's lasted slightly under 3 years. It got so flakey we bought him a new one for Christmas.

I don't have a kindle but with android tablets there's an option to reset it to factory settings as it was when new. That will often get rid of the bloat and bad bits. You may want to pursue that before you give up on it.

Another thing it would get so hot you could hardly touch the back of it.

If the battery is heating as you report, it is most likely bad or the charger has gone haywire and overcharging it. Most likely, the battery needs replacing, and that would explain the behavior you are experiencing. Also, the high temperature may have already damaged parts of the device.

I Googled how to reset kindle to factory settings

To reset your Kindle, press or tap the "Menu" button on the Home screen and select "Settings." The "Settings" screen appears. Press or tap the "Menu" again and select "Reset to Factory Defaults." Your Kindle will start the resetting process and power off automatically.

If your kindle is not like this just Google for other versions.

As far as I know, you can't play Candy Crush on a Kindle, so you must mean you have a Kindle Fire. Am I correct? Some models of the Kindle Fire (and there are quite a few), need a different charger, so be sure to check to ensure that you are using the correct charger. The chargers look very much alike but they have different power levels.

yes mine is a kindle fire and yes I have the right charger, I was using the wrong one at one time and amazon sent me the right one

o reset your Fire tablet:

1. Swipe down from the top of the screen and tap Settings.
2. Tap Device Options, and then tap Reset to Factory Defaults.
3. Tap Reset to confirm
4. Remember you won't lose any of your books or bookmarks because they are all kept stored on the amazon account you use for the kindle.

They've just released the Fire 7. The price is $50.

I've chatted with amazon a couple of times about my Kindle, and they fixed it right up. Fast and pleasant service from them.

It sounds like this might be your problem. Get this update immediately.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=202048000

https://www.epubor.com/how-to-update-kindle-fire.html

All versions of fire, this article was dated 7 days ago.

Have you tried doing this update?

no I haven't it is starting to work better now but I will keep this in case I need it

I would say do that update as soon as possible. It's a very important one and said they would quit working for some.

Don't Kindles update themselves automatically in the normal course of use, like Win 10 does on a PC?

She has no wifi there so probably not getting the updates when they get sent out. If regularly connected it likely would.

Okay, fair enough.

So wouldn't an easy solution be to go to a Starbucks, get a capuchino, connect to wifi and trigger a sync (if it doesn't do it on its own)? Though, I think they do that on their own.

In the first place I wouldn't go to Starbucks. I hate coffee or anything associated with it. I can't even stand the smell of it. I will go to Pierre or Bismarck this week and see if I can do it.

Overreact much? I'd suggest going to a public library but maybe that will cause a similar explosion, you might hate those too.

no it is

just that you think I don't know that I can go to a place with wifi to do it. Besides I wouldn't drive 3 hours to find a Starbucks

to everyone who gave me advice. I went to Bismarck yesterday and hooked up to wifi and by the time I checked it, it said no new updates but my kindle is working just fine now. I think it automatically updated on its own. Now I can play CC whenever I want. TYVM

I am sure it did it as soon as you connected to the Internet. That's great news and yeah!