Nearly every one of these is recoverable, and most aren't even really failures. A sealed pot only gives steam two ways to go wrong: it can leak out when the seal is supposed to hold it in, which is why the pot won't come up to pressure or keeps losing it partway through, or it can stay trapped after the cook is done, which is why the lid won't budge. Everything else — mushy food, a thin sauce, beans that came apart — traces back to a different fact about that same sealed pot: nothing inside it can evaporate until you let it.
Won't come up to pressure, or keeps losing it
Steam is leaving somewhere it shouldn't. Check the valve position first — most electric models won't build any pressure at all if the valve is set to vent instead of seal, and it's the single most common reason a brand-new cooker seems broken on its first run. After that, the sealing ring is the usual culprit: worn, sitting crooked in its groove, or pinned by a stray grain of food caught underneath it. Check that there's actually liquid touching the bottom of the pot, too. A sauce that's gone thick and pasty can scorch and stop producing steam before the cooker ever reaches pressure. None of this damages the machine. Fix the leak and restart the timer — the food isn't cooking any differently than it would have, just later.
The lid won't unlock afterward
This is almost always patience, not damage. The lock reads actual pressure inside the pot, not the timer on the display, so if the cook shows finished but the lid still won't turn, it's doing exactly what it's built to do. Give it another five or ten minutes. If it still won't budge and the valve looks physically blocked rather than just still under pressure, don't force it — a blocked vent means the steam has nowhere planned to go, and prying a lid open against real pressure can send scalding liquid out fast enough to burn whoever's standing over it.
Why electric models throw a burn warning
The warning comes from a temperature sensor built into the base, not from anyone tasting the food, and it trips because something insulated the bottom of the pot before the liquid could spread heat evenly across it. Tomato paste, uncooked rice, flour, or dairy that hasn't been stirred in yet sits as a layer against the metal and heats up faster than the liquid around it. Stir the base clean, add a splash more liquid if the recipe runs thin on it, and restart. It's a rare cooker that actually scorched under that reading — the sensor is cautious on purpose, because it can't tell a thick sauce from a real burn.
Food came out mushy, or came out still hard
The timer on the display only counts time at full pressure, not the minutes spent getting there or coming back down. A natural release can add ten to twenty minutes of continued cooking at close to full temperature, which is why a recipe written for quick release turns mushy when you let it sit and depressurize on its own, and why the reverse recipe comes out undercooked if you vent it fast instead. Match the release method to the one the recipe assumes. If food is still hard after that, the cooker most likely lost pressure partway through rather than actually running the full time at pressure, not just building toward it.
Beans blew apart and the skins came off
This is a release-speed problem, not a cooking-time one. A bean's skin holds moisture that's already near boiling under pressure, and a fast release drops the pressure around it in seconds while the moisture inside is still trying to catch up. The skin splits from that difference, and the bean underneath, already soft, breaks apart right along with it. A natural release lets both sides fall together gradually, so nothing on the inside is pushing harder than the outside by the time the lid opens. Filling the pot no more than half full for beans also gives them room to move without crowding into each other on the way down.
The sauce is thin because nothing reduced
A pressure cooker can't reduce a sauce while it's sealed, because reduction is evaporation and the entire point of the seal is stopping anything from evaporating. Every bit of liquid that goes in comes back out, just hotter and more cooked. If a recipe wants a thick sauce, that thickening has to happen after the lid comes off — simmering uncovered, or on the sauté setting on an electric model, the same way it would in an open pot. Starting with less liquid doesn't fix it either, since a pot that dry scorches, or throws a burn warning, long before it ever comes up to pressure.