How to Reset a Bosch Dishwasher — Every Reset, and What Each One Clears

Do this before you reset anything

Photograph the display.

It is the one step you cannot go back and do later, and it is the step everybody skips. Codes clear themselves, and by the time a technician arrives the machine will usually be showing nothing at all — which means the single most useful piece of evidence has been erased by the thing you did to try to fix it.

Get every character. On the newer machines a code can be written with a colon and a second group of numbers, and the second group is the half that separates a blocked drain from a supply problem from too much detergent.

The three resets, gentlest first

1. Cancel the running cycle

Hold the Start key for three to five seconds. On most models the display clears and the machine runs a short drain to empty the tub.

This is the right one when a cycle has stalled — the machine is sitting there mid-wash and nothing is happening. It ends the program cleanly and leaves the machine ready to start again.

2. Switch the machine off and back on

Use the machine's own On/Off key rather than the breaker. Wait thirty seconds, switch it back on.

This clears the control's working state without touching anything stored. It is the reset for a machine behaving oddly — lights that do not match the cycle, a program that will not select — and it is enough surprisingly often.

3. Cut power at the breaker for five minutes

Genuinely off. Not standby, not the On/Off key — the breaker, or the plug if it is accessible under the sink.

Five minutes rather than thirty seconds, because the electronics hold enough charge to keep their state for longer than people expect. This is the full reset and it is the one that clears the transient conditions this city produces every storm season.

What survives all three

Some conditions do not care how many times you reset the machine, because they are not states — they are the machine correctly reporting something physical.

• Water in the base pan. The leak protection has tripped, and the machine will keep refusing until the pan is dry and whatever filled it is fixed. Tipping the machine backwards drains the pan and clears the lockout — it is all over the internet — and it repairs nothing.
• A blocked drain. Reset it as often as you like; the water is still not leaving.
• Scale in the heat pump. The machine will keep saying so until it is descaled.
• A door that does not latch. No reset makes a machine start with a door it cannot confirm.

If your code is one of these, the reset has done its job: it has told you the condition is real.

After a power cut

Storm season here produces a run of machines that came back confused. The full reset — five minutes at the breaker — clears a fair share of them, and it is free.

The ones it does not clear often have real damage from a surge, and the timing is worth telling us when you book. "It has been doing this for a month" and "it started the night the power went out" lead to different first checks.

When to stop resetting and call

Once a code has survived a full reset, doing it a fourth time is not new information. At that point the useful things to have are the photograph you took at the start, the model number from the edge of the door, and a description of what the machine does rather than what it displays.

Between those three we can usually tell you the likely cause and the range before anybody drives anywhere.