I'm a teacher and we have several Nooks our second grade teachers share. We've had the same problem; nooks getting stuck on 99% while loading. I discovered a solution that sounds crazy. I drive around with the Nook and when stopped in traffic, I power it off and then on. It takes six to seven tries, but eventually the nook "unfreezes". I don't know why this works, but it has worked five times now for me. I have a theory that leaving your WiFi zone and entering another might have something to do with it as the Nook tries to connect to a different WiFi signal. We haven't lost any apps during this process.