Front load washer (model: WF42H5000AW/A2).

The washer is 12 years old but has run flawlessly. Over the last month many of our loads have failed to start on the first try. The washer now fails to start 9 times out of 10. The wash sequence starts as normal. The door locks, followed by the drum rotating both directions. At this point the cycle will hang indefinitely with the LCD showing a spinning animation on all four segments. There are no funny noises, bangs, vibration, and no error codes. If I retry starting enough times, it will eventually run but this seems to be getting less reliable.

I have tried changing settings for hot, warm, and cold and with spin cycle enabled or disabled. All modes appear to behave the same.

I have checked error codes by holding Delay Start and Soil Level. There are several door codes from 400+ cycles ago. This is not the issue.

One recommended solution for similar behavior appears to be recalibrating the weight sensor. Run this by holding Temperature + Delay End for 3 seconds. This shows the Cb code before hitting start. The LCD shows the same spinning animation as a normal wash. The washer runs a drain cycle then does a slow rotation for a few revolutions. It finally attempts to accelerate very briefly. It then repeats in the other direction. I have had two outcomes:

The test ends showing END on the display and turns off.
The test hangs and continues to show the spinning animation forever. This is similar to the normal wash cycle.

I have not noticed any difference in the behavior of the test for these two outcomes. I interpret this as the same intermittent failure behavior I've seen during normal wash cycles. This test can reproduce the issue, but is inconclusive.

I have run the self-test mode by setting Delay End to 17:00 then holding Start. This shows SC (maybe 5C?) rather than AS like Samsung instructions suggest. Hitting start again runs a sequence of tests. The LCD shows tests 1, 3, Co, and Ho run quickly. Test 6 (Spin Check agitations) runs for almost 10 minutes. According to Samsung's description, this should only take about 30 seconds. The drum rotates just fine for a few rotations CW and CCW, alternating back and forth. The test eventually stops here showing the code HE.

Possibility #1: HE is a heater error. I am still not convinced because no other operation I have performed has ever shown a heater or temperature sensor error. This is the best lead so far.

I plan to pull out the washer and check the thermistor but any other suggestions would be appreciated.

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