I hate those valves.
If it were my house, I would dig the things up and replace them as fast as possible. We call one system with these, the Ghost System because no matter what we do, the valves will never work correctly all the time. Some days they work just fine, then they will go for weeks with no luck. If you change the valve every thing will be fine.
One sprinkler guy trick, connect 3 - 9 volt batteries in series. You would do this by stacking 1 on top of the other two, Then use aligator clip leads to connect the left over + and - to the valve. This gives 27 volts to the solenoid and should act like the controller and open the valve. You can diagnose controller and wire problems with this 10 dollar setup.