Fixing an unresponsive Nook touch screen
04 October, 2013 by Tom Elliott
I was recently given a brand new shiny Nook as a present and I really liked it. It was easy to setup, has a great backlight for night reading, has a good selection of titles and the battery life is great (lasted 2 weeks before needing to recharge). It is also more affordable than the equivalent Kindle.
One day though, the touch screen stopped working. The Nook was on and in idle mode, but it wouldn’t allow me to swipe to unlock and the ‘cancel’ and ‘power off’ buttons that appear when you try using the shutdown button weren’t reacting either. Anything involving the touchscreen was unresponsive.
I tried all-sorts of things to get the touch screen to work including multiple restarts, shaking it, various swiping gestures and pressing down hard (not too hard) on the touch screen.
Eventually the below steps got my Nook screen responding again.
- Make sure your Nook is fully charged. Mine was probably below 10% charge when the screen stopped responding.
- Dust the screen and make sure there are no hairs, grains of sand or anything else that could potentially cause interference.
- Carefully slide a piece of paper against the screen and where it meets the side of the Nook and also try blowing these edges to get rid of any other dirt around the sides of the screen.
These steps helped me fix the touch screen and my Nook has been working perfectly ever since, hopefully will help you too!
130 Comments
-
Margaret Ties says:
Thank you so much, Didn’t think it would be fixed so fast
-
Delores Seidling says:
I was getting ready to trash my nook until I ran up on Dave having the same problem with his that I was having with mine. My only problem with my nook it wasn’t unlocking this trick really did work for me thank you a lot for your help.
It’s back working now and I’m so happy, once again thank you Dave for your help. -
Brandy says:
I cannot believe that that worked. That’s all it took was screen cleaner. I’ve tried everything, but the most obvious. Thanks, Dave!
SKourtis says: Thanks!! this worked so well and very simple!
Mike says: My wife was frustrated to tears because her Simple touch would not unlock, and I just wiped screen with tissue and swiped with pushed piece of 20 weight printer paper up to screen frame, and NOOK came to life. My wife is all smiles!
THANK YOU! I just bought more nook books than I could possibly read in a reasonable amount of time, and then my screen was acting up. Followed your suggestion to clean it round the edges, and it’s working just fine now.
Does make me long for the days when we didn’t have to troubleshoot our books, though…
Felipe Zavan says: Cleaning the edges worked. Thanks a lot 🙂
Dave says: Took my Nook (little over a year old) to work, thought it was charged, but wouldn’t turn on at all. Plugged in at home, got it turned on, and found it had partially returned to factory settings! Scrolling wouldn’t work, and most buttons had to be pushed way to hard or wouldn’t work at all. Cleaned the edges with a piece of file folder — like magic! Works perfectly again. Will make sure to cean the edges regularly from now on. Thanks!
Bill Kemmerer says: Thank you! Cleaning my screen fixed it too. I had the same problems, and I LOVE my Nook glowlight. I’ve been going crazy the last 24 hours. I did notice just before it went bad, it would bookmark a page instead of turning the page. I must have had something on the screen that was throwing it off. Great advice. Thank you!!!
S.Jadoon says: Thank you,Thank you
I got my Nook simple touch as a gift from a dear one.My nook went struck.Followed your suggestion and bang it right now..
Thanks once again
Natasha says: thanks so much, my nook has been unresponsive for months now and I just thought of googling for assistance and I thank you so much!
Karen says: Thank you thank you thank you!!!! It works 🙂
Great advice I won’t forget
OK Bob says: Thank you for the sage advice. I got frustrated and bought an new HD+, which has a lot of net-friendly Android features, so it really isn’t the same tool. I’ts nice to have the Simple Touch back in operation, though.
David Pereira says: The paper around the screen edge worked. Crazy!!
Deb Robeck says: I sold my nook color and was called the same day stating that the touch screen was frozen. Indeed, the “back” button when under your settings key didn’t work (that is in the upper left corner), but many areas of the screen did work. I’ve cleaned the screen, restarted it numerous times and deactivated it numerous times. Still can’t get it to work. HELP!
ss says: sadly this hasn’t worked for me this time, although it has before now. Totally unresponsive now incl buttons.
Fran says: I followed your advice and my Nook is still stuck. Something must have gone beyond where I can reach with a wipe or with a paper. I’m quite dissapointed. I bought it just 5 months ago…
-
kif says:
fran use high pressure air hose ie hoover wid small attachment
-
Fran. Did you ever get it fixed? My friend had the same problem. All the cleaning in the world didn’t work. I went through her settings and found in accessability “explore by touch”. Make sure that is on. This did the trick immediately.
-
barbara hosey says:
I tried that in accessability it says off won’t let me change it
-
Dawn says:
Will not let me turn it on explore by touch.
-
diana hirst says: The paper around the edges worked, there were little grains of trash
kl Schmidt says: this worked, I have a fairly old NOOK, and was almost ready to give up on it but saw this and tried it and it is working well. Great news as I do not have a budget for a new one :). Thank you!
kif says: thanks fixed mine too
Pavlin says: Thank’s! It’s working 🙂 🙂 🙂
Rhonda Griffiths says: Yayyyyyy!!!!! It worked! Thank you:)!!!!!
Marco says: Thank you so so much!!!
Jim Schlitter says: OMG! So glad I found this! My wife’s Simple Touch suddenly stopped responding. Wiped screen with damp Charmin, used an air duster, and slid a piece of paper along the rim. Voila! Started right back up! I am blown away at the simple touch simple answer!
lee says: My Nook was still having screen touch issues after all of this so here is what i did… caution: it will either destroy your nook or fix it.
o- turn it off (power down)
o- lay on a flat surface, screen up
o- pour a pool of rubbing alcohol about 1/3 the size of the screen right in the middle.
o- using a thin plastic blade, work the solvent under the bezel to soften the adhesive
o- gently pry at the weak point until you can work the bezel away from the screen til you can see the clips
o- then continue working around until the bezel is free
o- remove the adhesive from the metal display housing and from inside of the bezel, mine just peeled off
o- clean both screen and bezel well with more rubbing alcohol on a paper towel and let dry
o- re-install the bezel (this time without adhesive) and reboot
good as new.
that’s a $200 Christmas present, right there.
-
Jacqueline says:
What can you do when the NST will not turn off? I hard reset the device and am now stuck at choosing a network to use. It is very frustrating to try and get this device working again. It is my cousin’s and she uses it in college. Help someone, please!
Bill says: Thanks! I’m back in business after cleaning my screen with an alcohol swab.
laura says: Never in a million years did I think just cleaning the screen would work, but it did!! Thanks so much for sharing your solution!
Peter says: Worked first try, thanks for the post.
sarah says: Astonishing! I live in China and bought my Nook about 18 months ago so I could easily bring lots of reading material with me. The screen has gradually become less and less responsive until I couldn’t unlock it or turn it off. I didn’t imagine it would be such a simple solution. Thanks so much!
bev says: Thank you…that worked..i also had a plastic screen cover that needed to be changed. My knook worked as soon as I removed it.I wouldnt have thought to check it without your cleaning suggestion thanks!!
Lisa Dixon says: OMG! This trick worked wonderfully! Could not swipe to unlock, ran the paper over the screen, poof! It worked!
Dennis Aschbrenner says: What life savers you are. I read where all you had to do was clean the screen so I did just that when the Nook wouldn’t respond. After cleaning it responded a little better but not completely. I noticed my wife had placed one of those screen savers on it. After removing the screen saver the unit worked perfectly again. I’ll be keeping eye glass cleaner readily available from now on and leave the screen saver off.
shaheed says: i have not used my phone for more than 2 months because i thought it was lost but it was hidden in my garden.now i found my phone but it is not responding to touch but its power button,volume button are only working.what should i do to make my phone respond to my touch.?
mary says: I have a Nook HD that is a year old and I never took the clear plastic screen off it and it kept my screen spotless. Then about 2 days ago, it stopped working all of a sudden, I could not swipe the screen any more and I couldn’t unlock my screen to even get into it. The only solution that did work was from BVD. I finally got into the Nook, went to Settings, then into accessability to “explore by touch”. It was already ‘on’ but I turned it ‘off’ and then back ‘on’. This worked for me. I can swipe to get in and can now go through my book lists! Thank you, BVD!
Valerie says: I used a business card to clear the edges and sprayed with Windex and cleaned glass. Worked after that.
Shirley says: Thank you, thank you, thank you! I was ready to toss my Nook Simple Touch aside and buy a new one. But I’ve only had it about 2.5 years and decided to search my problem on line. I’m ashamed to say the screen on my Nook was nasty. I fully charged it, cleaned the screen with a damp soft cloth and cleaned the edges with a soft tooth brush. Voila! Problem(s) solved!
Ed says: maaan! thank you SO MUCH! my nook’s touchscreen wasn’t working and I have a long flight ahead of me. I cleaned the edges with a paper and now works like a charm! thank you very much!
Maggie says: I am so happy I came across this post! I haven’t used my Simple Touch Glow Light in about a year and was so upset when I went to read on it today and was greeted with a frozen screen. I Google’d how to fix it and only came across websites advising to replace the battery. I just tried cleaning the screen with a folded piece of paper and my Nook restarted in a SNAP! I still don’t really understand the science, but I am so happy it worked!
THANK YOU!
Alexandre Savine says: Perfect!
This advice reminded me abou old good ‘wash your hands before seating at the table’. Works as ‘… before grabbing your Nook’ too. Even slow buildup of fingerprints can freeze any touch screen.
Thanks a lot.
rhymes says: Holy cr_p!! mthat totally worked!!!
Great advice, thanks!!
Lloyd says: Worked well. Thanks!
I’ll add my observations to this as well – bought one, didn’t work (keypad completely unresponsive to begin with) so just allowed it to charge
Keyboard was fun – only worked in the middle and gave you the character sets around the character you pressed, in random order. Checked out a few user hubs and found a recommendation to clean with moist tissues
Tried that – no luck, so I defaulted to my PC monitor cleaner (which is an acetyl cleaner, solvent based) onto a lint free cloth, let it evaporate for a few seconds then very gently cleaned the screen a couple of times, polishing back with another dry square of lint free cloth
BOOM – one working Simple Touch. What a bloody faff for new kit. I hope it isn’t going to need cleaning every time it gets used