What happens when a Water Softener recharges without salt?

What happens is like if you stopped for gasoline and there is no gas pumped into your tank although you stood there thinking there was, and then you pay and don't check the gauge on your dash and merrily run on down the road....

IOWs, there was no salt to regenerate the resin with and the resin runs out of capacity and then it can't remove any hardness and your water is hard.

To correct that you do a manual regen with the salt dose that is programmed into your softener but it is not enough to regen much of the bed and it runs out of capacity long before it should. And you do another manual regen and the water gets hard again in a day or so and you do it again, forever.

So what you need to do is two manual regens with the maximum salt dose for the cu ft volume and type of resin in the softener with as little if any water use between them. That fully regenerates the bed and you can go back to the original dose.