Equipment: Hampton Bay three speed fan with light. Came with pull chains, but has add on Hampton Bay remote. 5 months old, hardwired, not controlled by a lightswitch.

To begin, yes, I know this is operator error. :o Everything worked perfectly prior to last night. Partly overtired, partly force of habit from my old house, instead of reaching for the remote to turn the fan on, I pulled the chain. When the fan didn't come on I thought "Oh, wrong chain" and pulled the other one. When nothing happened that time the brain kicked in, I remembered the remote and realized that pulling the chain was probably going to make me cuss. Tried the remote and nothing happened. No fan or lights. Pulled the chain again, still nothing. I read that the fan needs to be set on it's highest setting on the chain when you install a remote, so I went through enough pulls, testing the remote each time, that I should have hit the high setting and nothing. The remote is one that has a small digital readout that shows temperature, fan speed, let's you set the fan to kick on and off at certain temps. So as I was trying the remote I verified that it showed that it was doing it's thing. I also pulled the batteries out of the remote and let it set for a few minutes and then reinstalled the batteries, hoping to reset something. Yeah, no luck there either.

So, did I break the sending unit in the fan or just confuse the snot out of it? Any help is greatly appreciated.

I'm not sure what you did-- pulling the chains on a remote fan shouldn't damage or confuse anything except possibly the user.

Your system of trying all the remote buttons on each speed setting is a good idea.

Try this: open the ceiling fan canopy, remove the remote receiver, and wire the fan without it. It should now operate exclusively from the chains. Set it to high, forward, light on, and then wire the receiver back in. See if it works.

If it doesn't then the receiver might just have freaked and needs to be replaced.

Ceilingfanrepair, thanks so much for your answer. It was spot on. The electrician just left (I opted not to play with it since it was hard wired). We took the remote sending unit out and straight wired the fan and everything worked. Replaced it with a new remote sending unit and voilà. Now I just have to take up with Hampton Bay why it croaked after only 4 months.

Appreciate the help!

Put the old one in the package from the new one, and return it with the new one's receipt. No argument from anyone.