---
title: "Resetting a Frigidaire Dishwasher After the Power Has Been Out"
description: "How to reset Frigidaire dishwasher after power outage: cancel first, let it drain, then three minutes at the breaker. What each step proves."
url: "https://frigidairemiami.support/blog/resetting-a-dishwasher-after-an-outage/"
date_modified: "2026-09-09"
Category: "Troubleshooting"
---


# Resetting a Frigidaire Dishwasher After the Power Has Been Out

How to reset a Frigidaire dishwasher after a power outage is a question this county asks every summer, and most of the time the answer is that the machine does not need resetting at all.

## How to reset Frigidaire dishwasher after power outage: three states a machine comes back in

**Fine.** The outage happened while the dishwasher was idle. Nothing to do. The clock on the microwave needs setting and the dishwasher does not.

**Interrupted mid-cycle.** Water in the tub, dishes half washed, a cycle light that may or may not still be lit. This is the common one and it is not damage. The machine stopped where it was, and what it needs is to be told to drain and start again.

**Confused.** The panel is lit but not responding sensibly, or a light is flashing in a pattern that means nothing to you. This is the one where a reset does real work — a control that lost power mid-instruction can come back in a state it cannot get out of on its own.

## Cancel before the breaker

The instinct is to go straight to the fuse box. It is worth doing the cheap thing first, because the machine has a documented way out.

**One press of cancel** clears a delay start. That matters here: if the display is showing a number between one and twenty-four, the machine is not broken and is not stuck — it is counting down hours to a delayed cycle, and this maker documents that as an error code because people search for it as one.

**A second press** cancels the running cycle and starts a drain routine. If there is water sitting in the tub, this is what empties it, and letting it run to the end is better than cutting the power partway through.

**A third press** stops the drain and switches the machine off.

Knowing that third press exists is useful, because people who have pressed cancel twice sometimes find themselves listening to a pump and wondering what they have started.

## Then three minutes at the breaker, not ten seconds

If the panel is still not behaving, cut power at the breaker for **three minutes** and restore it. This maker's own answer to most conditions on this appliance is a power cycle, and the length matters more than people expect: a control needs long enough for its supply to fully discharge, and ten seconds at the switch frequently is not.

Unplugging works equally well where the machine is reachable, which under a countertop it usually is not.

## The one thing a reset will never clear

The **control lock**. It survives a power cut by design — a lock that could be defeated by flipping a breaker would not be a lock — and this is exactly why storm-season calls about dead dishwashers so often end at a padlock symbol nobody noticed.

Before deciding the outage damaged the machine, look at the display for that symbol and hold the lock pad for three seconds.

## What is not the storm

Two things arrive right after an outage and get blamed on it wrongly.

**i20 — did not drain.** The machine could not empty itself in the time it allows. The maker's own list starts with the knockout plug in the garbage disposal, then the drain hose, its height and its route, then the filter. An outage can leave water sitting in the tub, but it does not create a blockage.

**i40 — clogged filter or sump.** Food soil has built up. The filter twists out by hand and this is an owner job, not a repair.

Both of those were probably on their way before the lights went out, and the interruption is what made somebody look.

## The genuine storm damage, which is rarer

Surges are the real risk in this county, not interruptions, and they do their damage to the control board rather than to the mechanism.

The sign is a machine that is dark with power confirmed at the breaker, or one that lights up and cannot complete any cycle no matter how many times it is reset. That is a visit, and it is worth mentioning the outage when you book — it changes what we bring.

Everything else on this page costs nothing and takes five minutes.

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