Last night our son Michael was trying to do a load of laundry when he discovered that the washer wouldn’t start.  Our LG Tromm front loading washer would light up when you hit the “program” button but when you hit the “start” button nothing would happen.  “Hmm,” I thought, “maybe I can fix this.”  I must be delusional from all the holiday cheer.

We’ve already had the washer serviced before and I knew for a fact that you could access the inside by popping the top off.  Well, I thought you could pop it off but after multiple attempts to pry the dam thing off I was ready to give up.  That’s when the brains in the family, Celeste, mentioned that she thought the top slid off.  Once again I was forced to bow to the wisdom of my wife.

So I get the top off and find neat bundles of wire that all appeared to be connected properly.  I did what I do with all things mechanical or electrical: I poked and prodded and pretended to be doing something.  After I’d spent what I felt was a sufficient amount of time not knowing what I was looking at I plugged the washer in and tried to start it.  I felt quite wise that I did this before I put the lid back on since it would be necessary to not know what I was doing for another indeterminate amount of time if it didn’t start.  Sure enough it didn’t start so I spent another couple of minutes poking and prodding before I finally stopped kidding myself and put the lid back on and plugged the washer in again.  Then I kicked it.  That’s always my last resort and it works more often than you’d think.  Not this time.

While I was pretending to do something Celeste was on the phone with LG and when asked for the washer’s symptoms was told by the customer service rep that they’d received feedback similar to this in the past.  Apparently this problem can often be alleviated by following this scientific method:

1. Unplug the machine for about 10 minutes.
2. Repeatedly push the start button until it starts.  It may take several pushes (make that about 100) before the machine will start.

Sure enough it worked. We were told that this process effectively re-sets the washer’s “board” or in other words we had to re-boot our washer.  I’m now convinced that LG is Korea’s answer to Microsoft.