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It sounds like the ground wire leading to the valves maybe disconnected somewhere. It also sounds like someone has possibly turned the water supply to the valves off. Check those two things first.

Quoted from "mrfixit"

It sounds like the ground wire leading to the valves maybe disconnected somewhere. It also sounds like someone has possibly turned the water supply to the valves off. Check those two things first.

If you can't tell for sure if the water supply is on or off, try turning one of the circuit on manually at the valve. If it's an issue with water being shut off, then manually turning the valve on will fails as well.

To test if a common wire is broken, disconnect the ground (common) wire and any one circuit wire. Use an ohm meter and test the resistance between the two. It should be something on the order of 100-200 ohms.

Another thing to look at is make sure the controller is getting power. While I don't know about the controler in question, I have heard of controllers that can run things like the display on battery power, but can't activate the vavles without power. A simple way to verify this is to unplug the controller. That should do something to the display. If not, then the controller is running on battery.

good answers guys. I agree with the above. Let us what you have tried other than the new controller so we can give you more info.