I recently discovered that putting my Kobo pretty much next to the wifi router seems to resolve the "stuck endlessly on 'Checking for Updates' and draining the battery" issue I've been having recently.

I'm in an apartment building, so there's a lot of stuff bouncing around on the 2.4 ghz band (thankfully the neighbour with the faulty microwave oven has moved away...). So interference makes sense.

But... does the Kobo firmware just not timeout the connection after some time?

I had this problem with my Clara HD. It was constantly dead when I’d wake up in the morning. I discovered it was stuck in an endless loop in the sync process just as you’ve noticed. I could’ve shut off Wi-Fi syncing, but I use it too much. The way I fixed it was to full factory reset my Kobo, then update it. Then I restored all my preferences and books. It was a complete pain, and all my awards got reset again, but I don’t have the sync loop issue anymore. In fact, syncing is quick now.
The only time-out I have noticed is - if there is no activity from the device it will disconnect the WiFi after 2 minutes (e.g: successful synch) but the WiFi stays turned on. So I guess if the Kobo website is still up and it is trying to synch it will keep going until the battery goes flat...

I suffer from this same issue usually once a month, for years now....
Resetting it or even just signing out is only a bandaid solution until it happens again. I’ve had this happen on all of my Kobo readers & it’s really annoying! Clara HD, Clara 2E & both Libras. My Clara 2E is doing it again right now and I had just reset the fool thing a few months ago.
Also resetting is kind of a pain as I have a lot of sideloaded books.

I don't know what to say. With the new firmware last Fall, my Clara was dying daily. I reset it and haven't had an issue for months. Even if it's only a bandaid, it's a bandaid that gave me months of perfectly fine battery life. 🤷🏻*♂️


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It is a pain. In fact, I described it as a *complete* pain. I have hundreds of side-loaded books, all organized in collections which I had to recreate.

But now my ClaraHD doesn't die while failing to sync while sleeping. Worth it for me.


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I suppose I could backup the db beforehand and restore it afterwards.

Well, there's no way to guarantee my suggestion will fix your particular problem, even if they are similar. Have you tried logging out of your Kobo account, then logging back in. Sometimes side-loaded books remain (if there is a consistent way to preserve them, I don't know it), and it's a simple way to reset things without the nuclear option of a factory reset.


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What usually works for me is to delete my high number of books collections (they are between 60 and 160) using the device, wait a few minutes turn off then on again wait 10 minutes and do a synch.

Deleting the collections is no bother to me as I use Calibre to manage all of the collections.