Intermittant power window failure. Goes down ans sometimes wont come up for a day. Only left front.
What kind of car? Does the motor try to raise the window and not succeed, or does it do nothing at all?
Possibly a bad switch, more likely the motor is going out. Check with your dealer.
Yep, faulty motor or switch. Requires testing to determine which.
Most likely, an intermittent electrical connection – if you can’t hear any motor sounds with a stethoscope on the days it isn’t working, that’s a near certainty. Intermittents can also cause weak motor sounds, but then you have to worry that (e.g.) the motor itself is failing (e.g. a rusty bearing or open coil on a multi-coil motor). Other sound through the stethoscope might suggest (e.g.) worn broken or misaligned gears
Intermittents can be due to loose connections, wires that are broken inside their insulation, unintended grounds due to chafed insulation or pooled dirty water in a panel, dirty switch/relay contacts and other similar defects. That’d pretty much be my “order of decreasing probability” for the timing you describe.
IANAAM, but I wasted too many sunny weekends of my mispent youth tracking these things down on my friends’ cars
Intermittent things can be a real booger to troubleshoot. Could be anything in the chain: the switch, the wires (look for signs of chafing or pinching), the often well-hidden connector that allows removal of a door without disemboweling the entire car’s wiring harness or the motor itself. If you don’t see damaged wire, it’s a fairly safe bet to assume the wiring is OK. Likewise the door wiring connector, unless someone took the door off recently. That leaves the motor and the switch.
Here’s a hint: over the years, in different cars, I’ve replaced two motors, no wires and no switches.
Start by removing the door trim panel and clip a test light to the motor. Hit the switch. If the light lights up, it’s a bad motor. No light? Keep working your way back until it lights up and you’ve found the culprit.
Naturally, it’s the driver’s window - the one that gets used the most. 
If ytou feel like taking on the repair by yourself, I’d advise going to a “Pick Your Part” junkyard, find your model of car and practice taking the door apart on a car where it won’t matter if you break something. You may find that the window needs to go up or down to some intermediate point to make screws accessible. I stick a 12V cordless drill battery in my toolbox for such occasions.
The tricky part is figuring out what needs to come out with the motor. I’ve seen everything from the dead-simple “raise the glass all the way up, and remove three screws so the motor pops out” to the annoying “raise the glass so the three glass mounting screws are visible through holes in the door, remove them and the glass, lower the now glassless window frame all the way down so the mechanism gets out of the way and only now can you remove the motor.”
That may be a reasonable assessment for intermittents in general, but not for a power window where the connectors are undisturbed and shielded from the elements and the wires are stationary. The “order of decreasing probability” for this situation is motor brushes, switch contacts.
I’ll clarify my last response in that it applies to the driver’s window. Wiring for the other windows passes through the door hinge area, and broken wires to them are fairly common.
I currently have the same problem in my '99 Camry. If I roll down the window, it will roll up about 3 inches, then stop. If I wait 10-15 minutes, it will go up another 2 inches. Lather, rinse, repeat until it is all the way up. Motor?
Pretty sure bet, but I’d test the circuit first. It’s not impossible it’s a switch problem, and replacing the motor is a pretty expensive way to find out.
Likely a lack of lubrication, or something binding. The motor is protected by a self-resetting circuit breaker. The 10-15 minute wait allows the breaker time to cool and reset.
That makes sense, didn’t think of that. Is this something I might be able to diagnose and repair myself if I opened the door panel? If it is in the gear mechanism, I can replace the whole motor and mechanism for $50 (after core refund).
Probably so. It may just need cleaning and some fresh grease. If the panel doesn’t have screws, they make special tools for popping the door trim panels off. Buy one, as it is pretty easy to damage the panel using improvised tool (but if you must improvise, a putty knife or pancake turner has been known to work). You may need to replace the fasteners. Neither the tool, nor the fasteners are expensive. NAPA has a good selection of the fasteners.
[OT] Wait a minute, so the title of the album by Rush, “Power Windows”, is a play on words? All this time I thought it was just an allusion to geopolitics or something. :smack:
Here, we call them electric windows, you see.
Possible, but more likely the window track is either bad or very dirty.
Go get some WD-40. Get the window down. See the back channel that the window rides in? Spray WD-40 in that channel. Hold the nozzle so that the WD-40 gets on both sides of the channel, not just the bottom. Spray the entire length of both channels. Spray enough so that some runs down into the lower part of the channel (where the glass is) You don’t have to drown it, just get some down there.
Try the window.
If it works you are golden.
If the problem still exists, a rubber track that is destroyed beyond help or it is a window that is way out of adjustment, and it is straining so hard it is popping the breaker.
Now this is sounding better all the time. Always try the easy solutions first. 