After all my work, the dishwasher still wasn't working. It left a gritty mess on all the dishes, and a white film, even after I spent several hours cleaning out the spray arms and stuff.
So I googled it. Honestly, you can solve almost any common problem with the help of the internet.
Turns out this is a common problem with lots of solutions, many of which I had already tried, including running a dish cycle with yellow koolaid in the dish soap cup.
So I tried more. I ran the water in the sink until it was HOT before turning on the dishwasher. Then I put in only half a dishwasher soap-cup-ful of dishwasher soap, with no overflow or filling the open cup, despite the fact that both the soap and the dishwasher say use MORE soap with hard water. I added to this a half a dishwasher soap-cup full of salt. I already had white vinegar in the jet dry dispenser, so I figured the salt would be useful, since salt followed by vinegar is a fairly standard folk washing suggestion. This was counter-intuitive, because we have extremely hard water here (something like 3 times the amount of minerals in the water than the definition of 'hard water' required). And, finally, in the open dishwasher soap cup, I put a tiny squirt of regular liquid dish soap--like the amount you'd use to wash your hands.
It worked.
Unfortunately, and also typically of me, I changed so many things at once that I have no idea if all the changes were required, or if just one or two would work. I did try just the liquid dishsoap thing, and that didn't help by itself. And I tried just cutting the amount of powder I put in, and that helped some, but not as much as the whole package.
Whatever the key, I am once again on the path to having a functioning dishwasher.
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