---
title: "Resetting a Viking Dishwasher — and Counting the Lights Before You Do"
description: "How to reset Viking dishwasher controls, why counting the two flashing lights comes first, the four-second door rule, and what the pairs actually mean."
url: "https://vikingmiami.support/blog/how-to-reset-a-viking-dishwasher/"
date_modified: "2026-08-21"
Category: "Troubleshooting"
---


# Resetting a Viking Dishwasher — and Counting the Lights Before You Do

## How to reset Viking dishwasher lights — but count them first

This is the appliance on this make that shows nothing at all. There is no display, there is no code, and the only thing the machine will ever tell you is a **count on each of two lamps**.

Hold START for four seconds and it is gone. Nobody can recover it, and some of these conditions take a full cycle to reappear.

## The four pairs worth knowing

| Pots/Pans | Normal Wash | What it means |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | 5 | Drain error — sink, disposal, hose loop, filters |
| 2 | 2 | Fill timeout — supply valve, line, pressure, level |
| 2 | 3 | Low level — usually a dish turned over holding water |
| 4 | 1 | Temperature sensor |

Both lights flashing **continuously**, with no pause, is not a count. It is a **pan flood** — water in the base of the machine — and the right response is to shut the water off at the valve under the sink rather than to reset it.

## Then the reset

**START held for four seconds.** The selected cycle cancels and the machine returns to standby.

That is the only reset this appliance has. There is no hidden button and there is no key combination.

## The rule that catches everybody

After pressing START, the door has to be **closed securely within about four seconds** or the cycle will not begin. The start symbol lights to say the machine is ready, not that it is running.

People arriving from another make press START, load one more glass, and close the door twenty seconds later. Nothing happens, and the machine looks dead. It is not.

## The older machines

Dishwashers built before **26 May 2010** do not count flashes at all. They mark an **X** under a row of cycle lights, and the pattern of marks is the code. The two tables are not compatible and reading the wrong one gives a confident, wrong answer.

The date code is on the serial plate inside the door frame. Thirty seconds, and it settles which machine you have.

## When a reset is the wrong answer

If the lights are flashing a drain pair, resetting and running another cycle pushes more water at a drain path that is already blocked. Work through the free checks first — the sink, the disposal, the plug in the disposal, the high loop, the filters and whether the machine is level — because five of those six are outside the appliance.

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