How to get stove top to work till the repair person comes or till buying something? See detail.

Did you check the breaker for the stove?
Some of those stoves have built in fuses as well, but easiest thing is check the breaker box.

@SQUEEKY2 I just edited to add about breaker /fuse

Then it’s beyond me , but do hope some one can help you with it.

There may be or are appliance repair person here. (Added don’t have that problem)

Is it ALL the burners or just one?

@seawulf575 I think it’s just one, since it’s not about fuse/breaker it must be one.

So burners still work? Is it just one out of the four that don’t work?

Yes I think. I mentioned it’s not mine, above.

ACE hardware sells replacement burners.

@johnpowell…Or it could be 2 out of 4 I don’t know, but either way.

Could just be a bad connection. In that type of stove you can flip the burner up and pull it out. Wipe off the connectors and stick it back in. Sometimes that helps.

…It says in the title” till buying something” re. answer to buy burner.

I swear it’s worse than pulling teeth. Please return with some specifics.

I had a stove just like that!!! One burner did not work The problem was a ground connection through the timer circuit.
First make absolutely sure all the connections to the burners are clean. Pull them out and brush them with a wire brush. to clean off any corrosion. Do the connectors as well.
If it still does not work then go to the next steps below:
To diagnose it I put a voltmeter on each burner and checked to see if there was power when I turned that burner on. There was. So I then looked at the wiring diagram taped to the back of the stove. I followed where the low side connection to each burner went. If I recall it was a brown wire. One burner never switched to ground so as a temporary fix I jumpered it with a #12 wire to the ground for the burner next to it. That worked.
The stove was from 1991 and was really basic so it was not worth spending any money on it.
We ended up replacing the stove with a nice new one with a black glass top. Sleek looking.

That’s splendid advice, but for the life of me, I would buy a ticket to witness the op’s relaying of your prescription to her friend.

Go buy an electric hotplate for $20 and leave the repair to the pros.

@flo @stanleybmanly I forgot one step.
After I pulled out each element and cleaned the contact with a brush I tested each one with an ohmmeter. The small elements should read 20 to 30 ohms. The large element should be 15 to 25 ohms. The exact correct number will be on the print but that is not important. If the element is bad it will read infinite – above 100,000 ohms so it will be obvious.

You can buy a meter to do this at Harbor Freight for less than $7.00.
Harbor Freight Multimeter
Even if you are not working on the stove everyone should have one of these in their home. You can test AAA, AA, C, D, 9V batteries with it before throwing them away. It will pay for itself in a few months by saving batteries..

I get out my camp stove that I converted to propane.

@LuckyGuy Great posts, of course. But most of us are not going to try that.

@flo You might not want to get into the wiring diagram but checking the burners is easy. Everyone should know how to do that. It should be part of regular cleaning.

That may be obvious to YOU. But clearly it is beyond the scope of many. The very question is a BIG clue as to where any practical advice is going to wind up.

@LuckyGuy I agree with you on that. I was thinking about the wiring thing.

If the stove is old it might not be worth calling a service tech. The charge can be more than it’s worth.
But, checking to see if the burners are all good is definitely worth doing yourself since a burner can be bought for $20 and takes a minute to install and requires no tools.
If you buy the meter and find all the burners are good then, you’re out $7.
I promise, that $7 meter will be useful for all sorts of things later. Everyone should have one.

@LuckyGuy Totally makes sense. Thanks

Thank you too @SQUEEKY2 , @seawulf575 @johnpowell (in order of appearance.)

@johnpowell re. your post above “Could just be a bad connection. In that type of stove you can flip the burner up and pull it out. Wipe off the connectors and stick it back in. Sometimes that helps.” GA , I meant to thank you, under that something malfunctioned.

@kritiper same thing as above re.your answer.