I recently had to take the keypad off of the microwave and dry it in order to clear the “keypad short” error which completely disabled the microwave for some reason. Perhaps it was related to the several gallons of soup stock that we were boiling to reduce it down, directly underneath said keypad. Anyway, a heat gun soon set that straight, but then the microwave was inexplicably stuck in “Demo” mode.
For those of you who, like me, do not know what demo mode is, it basically makes the microwave never turn on the EM circuit. So, it doesn’t heat up your food. So, it may as well not work at all, unless all you need it for is to run the vent so the steam from your soup doesn’t condense in the keypad.
So, how do you get the microwave out of demo mode? The GE website says:
The Advantium 120 has a demo mode that can be used by dealers to display the features of the unit.
1. Unplug oven for at least 3 minutes.
2. Plug oven in
3. Before setting clock, touch and hold the “POWER LEVEL” and “START” pads at the same time for a full 3 seconds.
The demo mode will not be terminated by simply unplugging the unit, regardless of how long it is powered down. You must follow the instructions above to initiate or terminate the demo mode.
So, that sounds great! Sadly, my microwave does not have a “power level” button. Through experimentation, I discovered that holding the “HELP” and “START” buttons works. When successful, the screen displays the state of the demo mode (either enabled or disabled), and then reboots to the same menu, presumably so you can continue to fruitlessly toggle demo mode on and off until you get hungry.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go heat up some soup.
