Samsung [Buttons not responding]what to check

A Samsung fridge with an unresponsive control panel is far more often locked than broken, and Samsung publish the symptom in a way that makes it easy to confirm. Their wording: when child lock is activated the buttons on your fridge display will be unresponsive and the water dispenser will not work. That pairing is the diagnostic. A failed touch panel does not usually take the water dispenser with it, so buttons plus dispenser both dead at once points at the lock rather than at a fault. Getting out of it is the usual Samsung story of a procedure they will not commit to universally. Their power cut article says the most common method is holding the lock button, or the energy saver button, for three seconds, but states plainly that the steps to enable or disable child lock vary depending on your fridge model. Their separate article on unresponsive displays gives different figures for two different locks: press the Lock/Unlock button for more than three seconds to unlock the control panel, and in the case of Child Lock press the Child Lock button for five seconds.

So Samsung's own two documents give three and five seconds for child lock, and the honest answer is to try both. The same article covers a third state that is neither lock: Sabbath mode, in which the buttons, display and internal lights do not function while the fridge and freezer continue to cool. The way out of that is a five second hold on a button pair — Door Alarm with Water and Ice, Freezer with Door Alarm, or Power Freeze with Power Cool, depending on the model — until the lights go out or come back on, after unlocking any automatic control lock first. A panel that is completely dark, with the interior light off, but a fridge that is still cold, is that mode rather than a fault. Samsung add one more small thing worth knowing: if only one specific button stops working intermittently, it may be a gap between the contacts, and their instruction is to unlock the panel and press that button with force.

If the panel is genuinely dead rather than locked, there is a route Samsung publish that almost nobody knows about on Family Hub models. Open the right-hand fridge door, look at the top right of the door for a switch cover, push the cover up to reveal a power switch, turn it off for five seconds and back on, then refit the cover until it clicks. That is a display reset that does not involve moving the appliance or reaching for the plug behind it. For everything else the general Samsung reset applies: unplug for at least ten seconds, which they publish as the minimum for a reboot to happen at all. Worth ruling out first, though: Samsung note that most displays illuminate for about ten seconds and then turn off to save electricity, so a dark panel that wakes on a button press was never asleep in the wrong way.

1. 1

   Press any button and see whether the display wakes. Samsung publish that most displays turn off after about ten seconds to save electricity, so a dark panel is often nothing at all.

2. 2

   Try the water dispenser. If that is dead too, Samsung’s published symptom for child lock matches and you are almost certainly locked rather than broken.

3. 3

   Hold the lock button, or the energy saver button, for three seconds. Samsung give that as the most common method while noting it varies by model. If nothing changes, hold the Child Lock or Lock/Unlock button for five seconds — the figure in Samsung’s other article.

4. 4

   If the display and the interior light are both off but the fridge is cold, treat it as Sabbath mode: hold one of Samsung’s published pairs — Door Alarm with Water and Ice, Freezer with Door Alarm, or Power Freeze with Power Cool — for five seconds until the lights come back on.

5. 5

   Wipe the panel with a dry cloth. Moisture across touch controls stops them reading properly, and a damp cloth leaves it no better than it was.

6. 6

   On a Family Hub, use the hidden switch: open the right-hand fridge door, push up the cover at the top right of the door, switch off for five seconds, switch back on and refit the cover until it clicks.