How to reset a tumble dryer: the load comes out first

Why a dryer reset starts at the door, not the plug

On every other appliance on this site, making it safe means removing the power. On a tumble dryer that is half the job, and the manufacturers who explain why do it in terms that are worth repeating. Beko's safety guidance says that when a cycle is interrupted, heat can keep building in the load and lead the clothes to ignite "several hours after the dryer has been stopped" — they call it super heating, and they name a dryer stopping because of a fault as one of the ways it happens. AEG's manual says never to stop a dryer before the end of the cycle unless all items are quickly removed and spread out so the heat dissipates. Hotpoint's own reset for their current machines puts it in order: switch off and unplug, then "open the door immediately and pull laundry out, to allow the heat to dissipate", and only then wait.

Pulling the plug on a fault is stopping the cycle. So the first step of every reset below is the same, whatever the badge: open the door, take the load out, and spread it over an airer or across the bath rather than leaving it heaped in a basket. A warm, part-dried heap holds its heat rather than losing it. Then deal with the machine.

What each manufacturer publishes

The procedures are all a version of unplug, wait, restart. The waits are not interchangeable, and where a manufacturer gives a longer one it is for a reason.

• AEG, Zanussi and Electrolux (one platform, character-identical fault tables): unplug at the wall, wait thirty seconds, plug back in. On E70 they ask for two hours instead, and say not to use the machine until the problem has been fixed, because E70 means the machine can no longer read its own temperature. Two resets is a sensible limit on any code.
• Samsung: unplug, wait at least thirty seconds, which they say lets the board reset. On the sensor codes — tC5 among them — they ask for two to three minutes, to let the compressor settle. If the same code returns twice, stop: on a heat pump machine a repeated code is nearly always about airflow, and cycling the power does nothing to a blocked heat exchanger.
• Hotpoint and Indesit, current machines showing a two-part code beside a spanner symbol: switch off and unplug, open the door immediately and pull the laundry out, wait about fifteen minutes, reconnect, reload and restart. Fifteen minutes is far longer than most brands ask and suggests they want the machine genuinely cool. Older machines showing a single F number: turn off, unplug, clean the filter and the condenser, plug back in and start another programme — and that is all the meaning Hotpoint have ever published for that family.
• Hoover, on the two models that show E codes: turn off and unplug, wait a minute, turn on and restart a programme, and if the code returns contact an authorised service centre. Candy, on the Haier-built F-code machines, publish one line at the foot of the fault table: if the codes appear again after taking measures, switch off, disconnect the power and contact customer service.
• Bosch: for the five codes on their website — a filter, a container, a load, a door — the answer is to fix the thing and restart, not to cycle the power. In the manuals, where every numeric code is one catch-all row, the instruction for a malfunction is to switch the appliance off and on again.
• Miele vary it by code. For the software version of F50, which appears about a minute after you open the door to add something, switch off and back on again straight away — the timing matters. To clear the "Clean out airways" lamp, open and close the door with the dryer switched on. For a load that has balled up, untangle it, remove a few items, switch off and on and restart. Where Miele give no reset, which is 24 of their 28 codes, their sentence is "This is a technical fault that you cannot remedy yourself", and cycling the power on one of those achieves nothing.
• LG: on every sensor, compressor and drain pump code, the published instruction is "Unplug the power plug and call for service", with no intermediate step and no suggestion of trying again. The exceptions are the owner-fixable ones — a door not properly closed, a filter not in the machine, a condenser cover not refitted — where the fix is the reset.
• Beko and Blomberg have no codes to clear. Their dryers speak through named lamps, plus one message, F L t, which means the filters need attention. A reset is the ordinary thing: off at the wall, a minute, on, start a programme — after the load is out.

Before you reset anything: is it a fault at all?

More dryer resets are attempted on machines with nothing wrong with them than in any other category here, because so much of what a dryer displays is a prompt.

Bosch "Hot" means the machine is running its cool-down. It is explicitly not a fault, Bosch say "do not change the set programme", and opening the door cancels the cooling — which leaves you holding hot laundry, the exact thing every warning above is about. Let it finish; "End" follows. CrE or CArE is a prompt to run the appliance care programme, and CP1 and CP2 appear while that programme is being set up; CP2 takes around four hours and Bosch say not to cancel it.

Miele's Locked lamp shining steadily during a programme is normal — the door locks while the drum turns. The same lamp flashing when you switch on means the child lock is engaged. 888 is shop demonstration mode. 0:00 or CHE means the load has rolled into a ball and needs untangling. Three LEDs together mean the power was interrupted mid-programme; start it again.

Lamps on a Beko, Candy or Hoover — filter, water container — are maintenance prompts. Of 311 official Candy and Hoover dryer manuals, 233 document no fault codes at all, so a single lamp lit or blinking on those machines is not a code to look up. All the lamps flashing together on a Candy or Hoover is a countable code; on an AEG it is a configuration failure that nothing but switching off will touch.

Sentences. Samsung's Bespoke range and LG's premium heat pump machines have stopped showing codes and write phrases instead — "Check filter", "Empty the tank", "Temperature sensor error". If your display is writing words at you, nothing is wrong with the display and there is no code to find.

Reading the code you have got

Two brands need a moment's care before you look anything up. AEG machines show E codes on newer displays, C codes on older ones, and on machines with no display count flashes on two separate lamps — the anti-crease or end-of-cycle lamp gives the first digit and the start/pause lamp the second, so five flashes then two is E52, not "error five". LG run three incompatible systems, and their documents render the numeral 2 in a way that reads as z, so tEz is tE2 and E3z is E32; F1 and 1F are different codes one transposition apart, an overheat and a missing filter. Samsung's dC and dE are one code with two suffixes.

When a reset is the wrong answer

Some dryer codes are published without a retry, and the manufacturers mean it. AEG E70 and CE: unplug and do not plug back in until it is fixed. Candy F4, "Abnormal heating": contact customer service, with no owner check offered. Miele F158, "The appliance has overheated": book a repair, and Miele — who publish filter-cleaning remedies freely elsewhere — offer none here. LG F1, a sudden rise in drum temperature: unplug and call. Samsung HCL, a refrigerant leak from the sealed circuit: the manual says the machine is not to be used until the engineer has been, and the only thing you may do is switch it off. Those codes are the subject of the overheating guide.

And one thing to do before any reset on a Candy, Hoover, Hotpoint, Indesit or Beko machine of a certain age: check whether it is under a safety notice. Three live campaigns cover this category, and a machine in one of them should not be reset and carried on with. The recall guide has the dates, the markings to look for and the checkers.

Sources

The reset procedures and waits are the manufacturers' own, as recorded on the brand pages for AEG, Samsung, Hotpoint, Candy, Bosch, Miele, LG and Beko, each of which cites the manuals and support pages the wording comes from. The load-out instruction is quoted from Hotpoint's current-machine reset, AEG's manual and Beko's safety guidance, which the DRYER wording throughout this category is written from. The display prompts are from Bosch's display legend and Miele's per-message articles.