Last night I thought I would do some reading. I picked up my trusty kindle, but it was stuck on a screen where it was rebooting. "NO" I cried.
I looked around on the web. It was recommended to take the battery out for 1 minute, but is so hard to get the back cover off. Then I found this is not what is required for kindle 2. I then tried holding the power on for 15 seconds, 30 seconds. I after much messing around it still would not unfreeze.
I plugged it into various power sockets, but the power light would go off after 5 seconds. In end I just plugged into the usb port of my linux PC, and the opened a can of beer and watched the end of Utopia episode 2.
The next day it seemed OK. I don't think the battery was low, but I am happy it is alive again.