Door Locking Order Puzzle (1999 Honda Accord EX)

[captainpicard]

Hello everyone, new poster here! I have some basic mechanical experience with my 1999 Honda Accord EX, and I'm fairly handy, but I'm hoping someone with more experience with the electrical system can help me avoid unnecessarily removing the door trim and futzing around.

 

Normal Operation: Usually, when using the remote to lock my car, I press it once and it locks all four doors. When I press unlock the first time, it unlocks the front driver's side door. A second press unlocks the other three doors.

 

Current Problematic Operation: Right now, when I press the lock button on the remote with all car doors unlocked, all doors except the driver's door lock. I then have to open the driver's door, manually press down the lock, close the door, and press the lock button again to arm the alarm system (all doors must be locked for the system to arm). HOWEVER, when I press the unlock button, none of the doors unlock at all, but the alarm system does disable (I can tell because the "security" light stops flashing"). Once the car is fully locked like this, all the remote is good for is enabling/disabling the alarm system, and I have to unlock the door with key. Further, if I'm in the car, the electric lock/unlock switch works for all doors except for the driver's door. I can't hear any action from the solenoid in the driver's door.

 

Previous issue: I recently had to replace the actuator in the front passenger side door. When I use the lock/unlock switch or the remote, I could hear the actuator make a noise and the lock would wiggle, but not actually switch positions.

This differed from my current situation in two ways:

1) The passenger's side door not locking didn't affect the ability of the other doors to lock/unlock.

2) the actuator still made noise, but was just too weak to work. Currently, the actuator is completely silent.

 

Idea: Is there some ordering of events where if the driver's door doesn't unlock, the computer won't let the other doors unlock or something? I can't figure out why I can't unlock the other doors even if the driver's door won't unlock.

 

Crux of the issue: What's wrong here? I can take off the trim and see if the driver door lock actuator is receiving a voltage or not. That said, I'd rather not have to take off the trim to check this and then also to replace the actuator. Can the actuator fail in this way? Does this seem like a more severe electrical issue?

 

Thanks so much for taking time to help me out with this! I'm happy to provide any other information if it would be helpful.

 

Julian