Garage Door Opener Diagnosis and Repair: what to note first

You press the remote from the driveway and hear the motor hum overhead, a steady drone with no movement behind it. The door stays shut. Press again and the hum returns, then quits, as if the machine is trying and cannot get a grip on anything.

Worth answering before the call

Does the fault happen with the wall control, the remotes, the keypad, or all of them? Is the garage connected to the house, or does it have a side door? Can you see a gap in a spring above the door, or a loose cable?

What should I check before calling?

Look for the simple things: is the opener plugged in and its light working, has the wall control's lock indicator started blinking, does another remote work, is anything sitting in the path of the sensors, and are the little sensor lights steady. Note what the motor does when you press a button. Do not try to lift a door that is stuck if a spring looks broken. Whatever you find, tell the technician; it shortens the diagnosis.

My opener went completely dead after a power outage. Is it finished?

Not usually. Outages and the surges that ride along with them commonly trip a breaker or a ground-fault receptacle, blow the small fuse on the board, or knock out the transformer, and each of those is a modest repair. A surge that damages the logic board itself is the more serious case, and whether that board is replaced or the unit retired depends on the model's age and part availability. The diagnosis tells you which case you have.