Five minutes of checks that solve a surprising share of opener problems.
Openers fail in patterns. Work through these in order before booking anything — a good share of calls turn out to be a sensor nudged by a bike.
Look at the two small sensors near the floor on each side. One should show a steady light. If it is off or flickering, they are misaligned, dirty, or a wire has been pinched. Wipe the lenses, adjust one bracket until both lights are steady, and try again. Persistent flicker after realignment usually means a damaged sensor or a broken wire — a routine opener repair.
Either the trolley is disconnected from the carriage (pull the red cord back and run the opener until it re-latches), or the drive gear has stripped. Stripped gears sound like a coffee grinder and leave plastic shavings on the floor under the motor. Gear kits are a standard stocked part.
If the door itself will not move by hand either, the problem is not the opener at all — check for a broken spring.
Usually a weak remote battery or a hanging antenna wire that has been tucked up into the motor housing. Let the antenna hang straight down. LED shop lights and some smart bulbs also swamp the receiver frequency — if the problem started when you changed a bulb, that is your answer.
Check the outlet with something else, check the breaker and the GFCI, and check the wall console wires at the terminals. If the opener has power and the safety sensor lights are on but nothing responds, the logic board is the likely fault.
Most LiftMaster and Chamberlain units blink a code: one to two blinks generally points at the safety sensors, three at the wall control circuit, four at sensor alignment, five at the motor, six at the logic board. The label inside the cover lists the exact codes for your model.
The close-force or down-limit setting has drifted, so the opener thinks it hit an obstruction. There are adjustment screws or buttons on the unit, but be careful: setting the force too high defeats the safety system. If small adjustments do not fix it, the door is probably binding mechanically, which is a door problem rather than an opener problem.
Under fifteen years old with a healthy board: repair. Older, noisy, chain-driven, no rolling-code security and no battery backup: a new belt-drive opener is usually the better spend, and it is dramatically quieter for anyone with a room over the garage.
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