Block Kindle Special Offers

  1. Make sure your computer is configured to “Show hidden files, folders, and drives”.
  2. Connect your Kindle to your computer with your USB cable.
  3. View your Kindle in Windows Explorer.  Open the system folder and you’ll find an .assets folder.
    .asset folder

    (Click for full-size image)

  4. Delete the .assets folder.
  5. Create an empty file in the system folder named .assets.  That keeps the Kindle from re-creating the .assets folder.  The easiest way is to create an empty file is to open the system folder, right-click on the list of files and folders in system, and select New->Text Document from the context menu.  That creates a file named New Text Document.txt.
  6. You can’t name a file with a leading period in Windows, so you need to open a command prompt window.  Hold down the Shift key and right-click on the system folder, then select Open Command Window Here.  This opens  a character-based command prompt window (a “DOS Box”) with a prompt showing the location of the system folder (in my example, the prompt is D:\Kindle\system).
  7. Enter this command:
    rename “New Text Document.txt” .assets
    at the prompt to rename the file you created in step 5.
  8. That’s it!

The Kindle stores Special Offers in folders inside the .assets folder.  When it can’t write to those folders, it assumes there’s no wireless connection and displays a default screensaver