Garage door won't open? Here's how to fix it.

Why won't my garage door open?

A garage door that won't open is most often a power or electrical problem or a broken spring — followed by an engaged lock, a trolley stuck against the stop bolt, a door disconnected from the opener, a snapped cable, or an off-track door. How hard it is to fix doesn't follow from the category: a dead remote battery is a two-minute job, a failed opener is not, and anything involving springs or cables belongs to a technician.

There's a useful split worth remembering: the most common mechanical reason a door won't open is a broken spring, but the most common reason overall is something electrical — no power, a dead remote, or a tripped breaker. That's worth knowing before you assume the worst, because several of those you can check yourself in a few minutes. It doesn't mean every electrical cause is a quick one; a dead remote battery and a failed opener are both "electrical", and only one of them is a five-dollar fix.

Here's the short ranked list of what causes it. Each links to its section below:

• No power, a tripped breaker, or an engaged Lock button — the most common cause overall, and the easiest to rule out.
• A broken spring — the most common mechanical failure; the door is too heavy for the opener to lift (call a pro).
• A locked, stuck, or disconnected door — the motor runs or hums but nothing moves.
• A dead remote or keypad — the wall button works but the remote doesn't.
• A snapped cable or off-track door — the door hangs crooked, jams, or only opens partway.

The single most useful thing you can do first is the 30-second test below — it splits the whole list into "easy fix" versus "call a pro" in under a minute.

Start here — the 30-second test (opener or spring?)

Look at the springs, cables and rollers first. If any of them look broken or damaged, stop — don't pull the release cord at all. If they look intact, then with the door closed pull the red emergency-release cord to disconnect the opener and try to lift the door by hand. If it won't budge or feels extremely heavy, you have a broken spring — stop and leave it down. If it glides up easily, your springs are fine and the problem is power, the remote, the opener, or the link between the opener and the door.

Here's what you're looking for:

• Springs. A torsion spring sits on the bar above the door. Intact, its coils are tight against each other; broken, there's a clear gap where the coils separated. Extension springs run along the tracks and hang slack or in pieces when they fail.
• Cables. The lift cables should be taut on both sides. Slack, frayed, or dangling cable means don't touch the door.
• Rollers. Any roller out of its track, or a visibly bent track or rail, is the same answer — leave it.

If the visual check comes back clean, the lift test is the fastest way to tell a serious mechanical failure from a five-minute fix, and it's exactly how a technician triages the call over the phone. The springs — not the opener — do the heavy lifting on a garage door. So when you take the opener out of the equation and lift by hand, the door tells you a lot:

• Won't lift / very heavy → a broken or failing spring. The door is now dead weight. Leave it closed, step clear, and head to the broken-spring section. Don't keep running the opener — it can burn out trying.
• Lifts smoothly → the springs are fine. The problem is in the power, the remote, the opener itself, or the connection between the two — continue to the power and opener sections.

Do the test with the door fully closed — that's the one position where disconnecting can't let it drop. A door stuck partway open isn't a lift-test situation at all: keep people and cars out from under it and call us instead.

Why your garage door won't open: symptoms and causes

Match what your door is doing on the left, and start with the fix on the right. If two rows fit, run the visual check and lift test first — it settles most of them.

No power — the door is completely dead

If there are no motor sounds and no opener lights at all, it's a power problem. Confirm the opener is plugged in, check the wall outlet, and reset any tripped breaker or GFCI before anything else.

It sounds obvious, but a dead opener is one of the most common "won't open" calls — and it's almost always something simple upstream of the motor:

• Check the plug and outlet. Openers get bumped, and ceiling outlets fail. Make sure the cord is seated, then test the outlet with something else (a phone charger works).
• Reset the breaker or GFCI. A tripped breaker in the panel — or a tripped GFCI outlet in the garage — kills the opener silently. Reset both.
• Power-cycle the opener. Unplug it, wait for the lights to go out, and plug it back in. This soft reset clears logic and timing glitches and does not erase your programmed remotes — wiping those is a deliberate separate step (holding the Learn button for about six seconds).
• Check the Lock button. Most wall consoles have a Lock button — sometimes labelled Vacation. With it on, Chamberlain's own documentation says the receiver logic board will not accept signals from the remote control. Hold the Lock button for two seconds to turn it off; the LED goes solid when it's cleared.

If the opener has power but is unresponsive or dead, that's an opener fault rather than a power one — our opener repair page covers what we replace versus repair on those.

The motor runs or hums but the door won't move

There is a common shortcut on the internet that says a humming opener means a broken spring. It's often true, but it isn't the only answer, and it isn't the first thing to check. Chamberlain's own troubleshooting lists several causes for this symptom — an engaged lock, a trolley lodged against the stop bolt, a broken spring, a door disconnected from the trolley, and then internal electrical faults. Two of those cost you nothing to rule out, so start there.

How long the motor hums is itself a clue. A brief hum that quits almost immediately points to something physically blocking the door — a lock, a stuck trolley, or a broken spring. A long hum, roughly 30 seconds, usually means the opener is running happily but isn't connected to the door at all. Work through it in this order:

• 1 — An engaged lock. Two different things get called a lock. The Lock button on the wall console blocks remote signals. The manual slide lock is a metal bar or L-handle on the inside of the door that physically bolts it to the track — and an opener will hum against it all day. Check both before anything else. If a slide lock is engaged, disengage it and try again.
• 2 — The trolley stuck on the stop bolt or stop tab. If the door once travelled too far, the trolley can end up lodged against the stop at the end of the rail, and the motor will hum without moving anything. You can see this: look along the ceiling rail at where the trolley has ended up. Chamberlain does publish a procedure for freeing it, but it involves releasing the door, loosening the chain or belt several turns, and re-testing the safety reversal afterward — so if you're not comfortable with all three steps, this is a call-us job rather than a five-minute one.
• 3 — A broken spring. If the locks are clear and the trolley is fine, look at the springs and cables (see the visual check). A broken spring means the opener can't lift the weight. Stop running it and see the broken-spring section.
• 4 — The door disconnected from the trolley. This is the long-hum case, and it's the good outcome: the opener works, it's just not attached to the door — usually because someone pulled the red release cord. Reconnecting takes a pull on the release handle and a full opener cycle; see the re-engage step.
• 5 — Something inside the opener. If all of the above check out, the fault is electrical or mechanical inside the motor unit. Chamberlain attributes a persistent hum to a failing capacitor, a damaged motor, or a damaged logic board depending on the pattern, and grinding rather than humming usually means worn drive components. None of those are homeowner repairs — that's a service visit.

Newer openers also blink a diagnostic code on the motor unit. If yours is flashing, count the flashes and look the code up in your manual or the manufacturer's diagnostic-code chart rather than guessing — the codes are specific and they'll save you a step.

The remote or keypad won't open it (but the wall button does)

If the wall button opens the door but the remote or keypad doesn't, check the Lock button on the wall console first, then the remote's battery, then reprogram the remote to the opener.

When the wall button works, you've already proven the opener, the motor, and the door are all fine — the problem is just the handheld remote or the keypad talking to it:

• Clear the Lock button. Free and instant, so do it first. With Lock on, Chamberlain says the receiver logic board will not accept signals from the remote at all — while the hard-wired wall button keeps working, which is exactly the symptom. Hold the Lock button for two seconds; the LED goes solid when it's off. If both of your remotes stopped at once, this is almost always it — it's rarely two dead batteries on the same day.
• Replace the battery. Most remotes take a single 3-volt CR2032 lithium coin cell. A weak battery works intermittently before it dies completely, so swap it even if it "worked yesterday."
• Reprogram the remote. Remotes occasionally need re-pairing, and Chamberlain notes you may have to reprogram after a battery change. Re-pairing takes a minute with the Learn button on the opener. Note that holding the Learn button for about six seconds does something different — it erases every remote and keypad in memory, so you'd then have to reprogram all of them.

For the exact re-pairing sequence, see our guide to programming a LiftMaster remote. For the step-by-step on the opener's backup battery, see our guide to garage door opener battery replacement.

Is it a broken spring? (the #1 mechanical cause)

If the lift test showed a heavy, won't-budge door — or you heard a loud bang like a firecracker recently — you almost certainly have a broken spring. This is a repair to leave to a pro, because the springs are under extreme tension.

The spring (usually a torsion spring mounted on a bar above the door, sometimes a pair of extension springs along the tracks) counterbalances the full weight of the door so the opener only has to guide it. When a spring snaps, the door becomes dead weight the opener can't lift — on a typical two-car door that's roughly 150–250 lbs; a single-car door is lighter, but still far more than you want to be holding. Here's how to confirm it:

• Look for a visible gap — this is the check to do first. An intact torsion spring has its coils sitting tight against each other. A broken one shows a clear separation where the coils pulled apart, usually an inch or two, and it's obvious once you know to look for it. Extension springs hang loose or in pieces.
• Think back to a loud bang. Springs often break with a startling bang — many people think someone hit the house or a gunshot went off in the garage.
• It won't lift by hand. A balanced door rises easily; a broken-spring door won't move. Treat this as confirmation only if the visual check already came back clean — you don't want to learn about a broken spring while holding a disconnected door.

This is its own topic, with the tell-tale signs and honest pricing laid out separately. If the door is heavy, read how to tell if your spring is broken next — and leave the door alone until it's looked at.

Snapped cables and off-track doors (including "only opens a foot")

If the door jerks, hangs crooked, opens only partway, or has a lift cable dangling loose, you're likely dealing with a snapped cable or a door that's jumped its track — both can stop it from opening, and both need a technician.

These often travel together with spring problems, since the cables and springs work as a system:

• Snapped or loose cable. The lift cables run alongside the door and frequently fail when a spring goes. A door that opens crooked, with one side higher than the other, is a classic snapped-cable sign.
• Off-track door. If a roller has jumped the track — after a bump, a worn roller, or a bent rail — the door binds and won't travel. Forcing it makes the damage worse.
• Only opens a foot, then stops. Chamberlain puts this down to four things: the door being out of balance, the opener's force settings no longer being correct, the opener sensing resistance, or the opener not being able to tell how far the door has moved. In practice that means clear the track first, then check the up-travel limit and the force setting (they're separate adjustments), and look for a flashing diagnostic code on the motor unit. If the door doesn't glide smoothly when you move it by hand, it's a balance problem — which is a spring job, not a setting.

Cables and off-track doors are tension-and-alignment work — not a DIY fix. If that's what you're seeing, our repair page covers how we handle them.

Brand-specific notes (LiftMaster, Chamberlain, Genie)

Brand-specific "won't open" problems still trace back to the same causes — power, a dead remote, Lock mode, or a spring — but each brand has its own reset and Lock-mode behavior worth knowing.

LMS services all the major brands — LiftMaster, Chamberlain, Genie, Craftsman, and MyQ-equipped units. Here's the general approach for each; for the exact button sequences and LED behavior, check the label inside your motor housing or the manual, since they differ by model year.

If power, the remote, and a power-cycle all check out and the door still won't open, the opener may have lost its program or have a failing board — a quick service visit sorts out which.

How to open your garage door manually (and re-engage it)

First look at the springs, cables and rollers — if any of them appear broken or damaged, do not open the door by hand at all. If they're intact, use the release with the door fully closed wherever possible, pull the red emergency-release cord hanging from the ceiling trolley, then lift the door straight up with both hands. Reconnecting afterward takes two steps: pull the release handle to reset the arm, then run the opener through a full cycle so the trolley relinks.

That's the short version, and it's enough to get a trapped car out when the power's out or the opener's dead. The part not to improvise: without a working spring the door is dead weight — roughly 150–250 lbs on a typical two-car door — so if anything looks damaged or it feels heavy, leave it closed and call us.

Our full walk-through on opening a garage door manually has the step-by-step, the rail-specific reconnect directions, the power-outage cases, and what to do if you're locked out.

From the outside? Only if an exterior emergency release has been fitted — a lock-and-key disconnect through the door face, which Chamberlain sells as a quick-release key. Most doors don't come with one, so without it you'll need to get in through another door.

When to stop and call a pro

Call a professional the moment you see a broken spring, a slack or frayed cable, or a roller out of its track — and any time the door feels heavy by hand. These need the right tools and spring-tension experience, and forcing them makes the damage worse.

The honest line: many "won't open" problems really are a quick fix — a tripped breaker, a dead remote battery, an engaged Lock button — and we'd rather you save the service call and do it yourself. But there's a clear point where DIY stops being safe: broken springs, snapped cables, a door off its track, or a fault you've chased without luck.

That last point matters here more than on most repairs, because a door that won't open is one of the easiest jobs to get overcharged on. Broken-spring calls are high-pressure territory — a single-spring fix sold as a four-figure "both springs plus a full safety package." We're family-owned in Citrus Heights and have been running these calls across the Sacramento area since 2018. No commissioned salespeople — actual technicians — and a written quote before any work starts.

What it costs. Our standard service call is $139 — the first hour of labor plus diagnosis, no parts — and it's often credited toward the repair. Parts and the job itself go on top of that: a single spring job is $325, a double is $425. If you need us outside normal hours, an emergency or after-hours call is $295. You'll see the number before we touch anything. You can see our repair services or send us your info and we'll take a look.

Frequently asked questions