How to Reset Washer Error Codes (All Brands)

Every washer brand 'resets' the same fundamental way — cut power long enough for the control to fully discharge, then let it reboot — but each brand wraps that core in its own rituals, and owners waste hours on button folklore that does nothing. This master guide gives the universal reset, the brand-specific additions that are real, and the rule that matters most: a reset clears a code's display, never its cause.

The universal reset (all brands)

Unplug the washer (or switch its breaker off) for a full 5 minutes — not 30 seconds; control boards hold residual charge and a short cut often changes nothing. Restore power and run a short test cycle (Rinse+Spin or Drain+Spin). If the code returns, it has told you the fault is present and real: diagnose it, don't reset it again.

When a reset is the actual fix

One-off electronic glitches after power flickers, storms, or a door slammed mid-sensing. The signature of a reset-curable fault: it happened once, after an electrical event, and never returns. Recurrence on any pattern (same cycle stage, same load type) is a fault introducing itself.

Brand additions that are real

LG: after unplugging, hold the Power button ~5 seconds (discharges residual power faster), then hold Start/Pause ~5 seconds, then plug in. Whirlpool VMW and GE top-loaders: their lid-lift sequences genuinely reset their motor controls — each is documented by its own brand (see the brand pages below). Maytag, despite sharing the platform family, publishes no lid-lift reset: Maytag's documented clear is a power disconnect of a minute or more, with POWER/CANCEL pressed once to clear a displayed code and again to restart. Samsung: no button ritual exists — the power cut is the reset. Kenmore: use the method of whoever built it (model prefix 110 = Whirlpool method, 796 = LG method).

How to clear an error code is not the same question as how to reset one

Owners use 'clear' and 'reset' as synonyms, and the difference between them explains half the confusion in washer troubleshooting. Clearing a code is an acknowledgement: it removes the display in front of you. Maytag documents the purest form — with the code showing, press POWER/CANCEL once to clear it, and again to restart the cycle. Nothing has been discharged, rebooted or re-measured; you have told the control 'noted', and if the fault still exists the code will be re-declared the moment its system is next exercised. Resetting is the deeper act described throughout this guide: a full power discharge that reboots the control itself, clearing latched electronic states that a button acknowledgement cannot touch. The practical order follows from the definitions. A code from a known one-off event — a storm flicker, a door slammed mid-sensing — deserves the full reset, because a latched glitch is exactly what resets cure. A code reporting a condition (drain, fill, lock, balance) needs its condition fixed first; clearing it beforehand merely erases your best evidence, and resetting it beforehand changes nothing except the timestamp of its return. Photograph the code, fix the cause, then clear or reset as the brand prescribes — in that order, the display ends up empty for the right reason.

How to reset a washing machine after an error code: the order that works

The sequence matters more than any brand's button ritual, and it is the same for every machine in this guide. First, read the code and write it down — a reset erases the display, and several brands (Whirlpool and Maytag among them) keep a stored fault history that a technician, or diagnostic mode, can still read afterwards, but your photograph is the copy you control. Second, fix the condition the code names: clear the drain filter for a drain code, restore the water supply for a fill code, redistribute the load for a balance code. Third, perform the brand's reset — the power discharge, plus whatever documented addition your brand has. Fourth, verify on a test cycle that exercises the system that faulted: Rinse+Spin or Drain+Spin for drain and motor questions, a small wash for fill questions. A reset performed in this order is a verification step, and its result is meaningful either way: the code staying away through the relevant stage closes the case, and the code returning at the same stage localises the fault to that stage's hardware with a precision no parts cannon achieves. Resetting first and diagnosing second inverts the logic — you spend your one clean reboot learning nothing, and the machine has to fault again before it can tell you anything.

Brand timings differ: one minute, five minutes, and why both are right

The most common argument in washer resetting — is it one minute or five? — dissolves when you read the brands' own documents instead of the forums'. Maytag's published reset guidance is a power disconnect of one minute or longer. Whirlpool's official F8 E1 document clears that code with a power disconnect of five minutes. Samsung's guidance for its fill-code family uses a power cut of one minute, while the fuller Samsung reset on this site uses five. GE's top-load guidance unplugs for a minute before its motor reset, and its general power reset runs two to five minutes. None of these contradicts another: each figure is the interval that brand documented for that machine or code, chosen long enough for that control's capacitors to discharge fully. The universal rule underneath them is the one this guide leads with — the cut must be long enough that the control actually reboots, and a too-short cut is the failure mode, never a too-long one. When in doubt, use five minutes: it satisfies every brand's minimum simultaneously, and it is why this site's universal reset is written at five. But when a brand page on this site gives your brand a specific timing, that page — sourced from the manufacturer — outranks the universal figure.

The lid-lift resets: real, documented — and brand-specific

No washer ritual attracts more folklore than the lid-lift, so here is exactly what is documented, brand by brand. Whirlpool's VMW top-load platform has a genuine lid-lift motor reset: with the washer plugged in and all indicators off, open and close the lid fully 6 times within 12 seconds, and the control resets its motor system — a documented cure for a specific post-fault state on that platform, and useless for a clogged pump or a dead lock. GE documents its own top-load motor reset with a different shape: unplug for 1 minute, plug back in, and within 30 seconds lift and lower the lid 6 times, fully, within 12 seconds of starting — GE's own literature scopes it to the motor system after drive interruptions. Maytag is the correction this site had to publish: Maytag publishes no lid-lift reset sequence in its reset guidance or its Use & Care manuals. The sequence circulates as a Maytag step because Maytag's top-loaders share the VMW platform with Whirlpool — but a shared platform is not a shared manual, and Maytag's documented clear is the power disconnect plus POWER/CANCEL. If your Maytag responds to a lid-lift, it responded as a VMW machine; if it doesn't, nothing is broken — follow Maytag's own page. The lesson generalises: a reset ritual is only real for the brand whose documentation prints it.

How to reset a Toshiba washing machine error code — honestly

This site has to answer the Toshiba question at a lower level of detail than the brands above, and it would rather say so than invent a procedure: Toshiba is not a brand this site covers with verified data, and no Toshiba code chart or Toshiba-published reset sequence stands behind this section. What can be said honestly comes from Toshiba's own owner's manuals for its washing machines (the AW-series fully automatic manuals), and their pattern is consistent. Toshiba's manuals handle errors code by code, and each code names a condition to check rather than a state to clear: E1 is about the drainage hose (mounted correctly, routed properly, not clogged), E2 codes are about the lid (open, or its lock stuck — treatment: turn power off, check the lid, restart), E3 codes are about an uneven load or an unstable machine, and E5 is about water supply (faucet closed, supply interrupted, filter clogged). Several treatments end with turning the power off and restarting the machine once the condition is corrected, and the manuals' standing last line, repeated across the error list, is: if the problem is not solved despite checking, unplug the power plug and request repair. So the honest Toshiba reset is the generic one this guide gives every brand — fix the condition the code names, cut the power fully (unplug, wait, restore), and restart — with the manual's own escalation when the code returns. Button sequences for Toshiba machines circulate on forums and answer services; none that we could verify appears in Toshiba's manuals, and none is printed here.

Codes that cannot be reset, only fixed

A class of codes defeats every reset on this page by design, because they are not stored states at all — they are live reports from a sensor sitting in the condition it is reporting. Flood and leak codes are the leaders: Frigidaire's i30 (water detected in the dishwasher's base pan) and Bosch's E15 (water in the base) persist exactly as long as the water does, and clear themselves the hour the base is dry; power-cycling them in the meantime only interrupts the drain pump that is protecting the floor. The same logic, one step removed, covers every condition code in laundry: a drain code with a clogged filter, a fill code with a closed tap, a balance code with one wet blanket are all re-measured on the next cycle and re-declared on the evidence. Owners experience this as 'the reset didn't work', but the reset worked perfectly — it rebooted the control, and the control's first honest act was to report the standing condition again. The tell that you are in this class: the code returns at the same cycle stage, on the same system, every time. That is not a reset problem and it will never become one; it is a diagnosis that has already been delivered, waiting for its fix.

When the reset works for exactly one cycle

The most informative failure in washer resetting is the reset that holds for one cycle, or one day, and then surrenders at the same stage as before. Read it as the machine pointing: a fill-stage return indicts the fill chain (supply, screens, valve, level sensing), a drain-stage return the drain chain, a spin-stage return the balance and drive systems. Intermittent faults — a valve that sticks when hot, a sensor hose that leaks its air slowly, a lock that proves itself nine times in ten — all present this way, and they are solved by pattern, not by repetition: note the code, the stage, the load and the date across two or three events, and the story usually names its own part. Two disciplines protect the diagnosis while you gather it. Never clear stored fault history (on Whirlpool-platform machines, diagnostic mode reads codes the display has forgotten) until the pattern is written down — the history is the evidence. And never let resetting become the management strategy for a worsening pattern: a fault that returns weekly, then daily, is a part failing on a schedule, and the reset that 'fixes' it each time is converting a planned repair into an eventual emergency.

Reset safety: the two situations where you stop and unplug instead

A reset is an electrical act on a water appliance, and two presentations convert it from a procedure into a hazard to walk away from. The first is water where it should not be: a machine standing in a leak, a base pan full, water tracking toward the outlet. Cut power at the breaker — not by reaching past the water for the plug — close the taps, and let the reset wait until the machine is dry and the leak's source is known; several flood codes exist precisely to enforce this pause, and overriding them re-energises a pump and a control in a wet cabinet. The second is any electrical symptom travelling with the code: a burning smell, a hot plug, a breaker that trips on restore, visible arcing or a panel that behaves as if possessed (phantom starts, self-cycling lights). Those are not glitches for the five-minute cure; they are the failure announcing its location in the power path, and the correct next step is power off and a technician. Everything else in this guide assumes a dry machine and a healthy supply — the boring conditions under which resetting is the safe, free, usually sufficient first move it is meant to be.

Key takeaways

• Never 'reset and pray' more than twice for the same code — the third appearance is a diagnosis, not a glitch.
• Write returning codes down with dates; intermittent faults are solved by pattern, not by parts.

Frequently asked questions

Related guides