How to reset a fridge freezer, and what a reset cannot fix

What a reset actually is on a fridge

A fridge has almost nothing to reset. The control board reads a handful of temperature sensors and decides when to run the compressor and the fans; a power cycle clears the board's state and any communication fault between it and the display, and that is all. It does not change what the sensors read, it does not melt ice, and it does not put refrigerant back. So the published resets are short, and the useful part of this guide is knowing when the appliance is not asking for one.

The published procedures

• Samsung: unplug the fridge, or switch it off at the fuse box, for at least ten seconds — they publish ten as the minimum for a reboot to occur at all — then plug it back into a wall socket directly rather than an extension lead or a multi-way adaptor, and give it several minutes to come back up. Their 88 88 group (with 83E, 85E and 86E) is tied to power events: a cut, a blown switch or a voltage drop causes a communication fault, and the reset above is the remedy. Samsung also ask you to check the fuse box while you are there, and if the code returns more than once, to have an electrician look at the supply before booking an appliance engineer. On a Family Hub there is a hidden power switch: open the right-hand fridge door, push up the cover at the top right of the door, switch off for five seconds and back on, and refit the cover until it clicks.
• LG: unplug, wait sixty seconds, and plug back into a direct wall socket — LG specifically say without power strips or multiple sockets. Allow up to five minutes for a full restart before judging whether anything changed. LG's codes may be preceded by E, r or Er depending on the model, so dH, F dH, Er dH and dHF are the same code, and if a power cut has wiped the display you can bring the code back by holding Freezer Temperature and Express Frz together for at least three seconds.
• Hotpoint publish no code-clearing sequence for fridges, because their E codes are mostly sensor and board faults that would simply return. What they do publish is the safety instruction that goes before any work: make sure the appliance is unplugged from the mains before replacing any part.
• Every other make, which for most British kitchens means an appliance with three lights or nothing at all: off at the socket, a minute, on. Then wait.

Before you reset: is the fridge in demo mode?

This is the trap the generic advice walks people into. Demo mode — Samsung call it Cooling Off, LG call it shop mode, the display shows OF OF, OF-OF, O FF or OFF — exists so a fridge on a shop floor can look alive without running its compressor, and it survives delivery to your house. The pattern is specific: the display is lit, the door light works, the buttons respond, and the cabinet is at room temperature. Listen at the back and you hear nothing, because the part that does the cooling is switched off.

The two big manufacturers behave differently, and this is the fact that matters:

• On an LG, a ten-second power cycle does clear shop mode, so it is worth trying early. The button route is to open the refrigerator door — the sequence will not work with it shut — and hold FRIDGE while pressing Express FRZ three times, or on some models hold FRIDGE and Express FRZ together for three seconds, and listen for the confirmation sound.
• On a Samsung, unplugging does not clear Cooling Off. A fridge that comes back warm after a night unplugged has told you nothing either way, and an owner who concludes the compressor has failed is very often wrong. The web instruction is to hold Energy Saver and Power Freeze together for three seconds and listen for a chime; Samsung's own manual gives six seconds for the equivalent procedure, so try the longer hold if the shorter one does nothing, and if your model has a different button pair use its manual, because Samsung say the combination varies.

Either way, give it several hours before deciding whether it worked. To stop it recurring, lock the control panel if the appliance has that function and wipe the display with a dry cloth rather than a wet one — LG say the mode is usually switched on by a button pressed and held by mistake while the door is open.

Two more things that look like a dead fridge

A dark display. Samsung publish that most displays illuminate for about ten seconds and then turn off to save electricity. Press a button before assuming anything.

Child lock. On a Samsung the giveaway is that the buttons go dead and the water dispenser stops at the same time. Hold the lock button or the energy saver button for three seconds; if that does nothing, Samsung publish two five-second pairs — Door Alarm with Water and Ice, or Freezer with Door Alarm.

After the reset: how long to wait

A fridge that has sat at room temperature does not get cold in ten minutes. After any interruption it needs hours to recover, and the freezer takes longer than the fridge, so the honest test is the next morning with the doors left shut. LG's FU code is a good illustration of why: the appliance measured that the freezer had not dropped below 3.5°C in the time it allows, and LG's own steps are the sixty-second reset, a check that the freezer is set to minus eighteen, food pulled away from the vents, the paper test on the door seal, and then several hours before judging. A high-temperature alarm — a red light on a three-light freezer, Hotpoint's E9, an LG display that blinks as well as beeps — behaves the same way: shut the door, leave it undisturbed, and a light that has gone out by morning was reporting an event. One that is still on with the door undisturbed is reporting the appliance, and that is when to book.

When the reset is a defrost

The commonest genuine fault in the category is ice, and the fix for ice is not a power cycle. LG's FF (freezer fan) and Samsung's 21E group (fridge fan, with 22E and 22C) both come down to a fan that has frozen up or jammed, and both manufacturers publish the same remedy: unplug the appliance, open both doors and let it defrost. LG's figure is at least eight hours; for a fan that is properly ice-locked they publish one day in summer and three in winter, because the ice is behind a panel a long way from the open door. Deal with the food first, because the contents will not survive that.

What you must not do is hurry it. No hairdryer, no hot water, nothing you can chip with. The evaporator pipework runs through the walls of the compartment, it carries flammable isobutane on any modern appliance, and Samsung's manual puts the instruction in one sentence: do not use mechanical devices or any other means to accelerate the defrosting process other than those recommended by the manufacturer. If the ice comes straight back within a few weeks, the defrost cycle is not doing its job and the fan was a symptom; book it, and say that a defrost cleared it once, because that points the engineer at the heater or the sensor rather than the fan. Fridge door seals, ice build-up and noises covers what ice means and where it comes from.

What a reset cannot fix

• Sensor codes. Hotpoint E1, E2, E7 and E8, and their equivalents on other makes. The board is reporting a reading it does not believe; cycling the power does not change the reading. A thermistor is a cheap part with an access cost, and the code page brackets Hotpoint E1 at £110 to £220.
• Defrost codes. LG's dH is the exact test the appliance failed — the defrost sensor did not rise by more than five degrees in eighty minutes of defrosting — and the answer is a heater, thermal fuse or sensor, at £120 to £260 with the labour.
• Refrigerant codes. LG's CH and CL are a detected refrigerant leak, the only fridge codes any UK manufacturer publishes that say so outright. There are no owner steps, there is no reset, and a sealed-system leak on a domestic fridge usually means replacing the appliance rather than repairing it. If you can smell gas near the fridge, do not reset anything: unplug it if the socket is somewhere you can reach safely, open the windows, keep flames and switches away from the room, and do not plug anything in or out nearby.
• A fridge in a garage. LG's Lo warns that the room is below minus ten degrees, and there is nothing to reset. The climate class on the rating plate inside the appliance states the ambient range it was designed for, and a standard kitchen model rarely covers a British garage in winter.

Two attempts is the limit on any fridge code. If the same code returns after a proper power cycle and, where it applies, a full defrost, the appliance is describing a sensor, a heater or the sealed system, and the next call is to a qualified refrigeration engineer.

Sources

• Samsung UK support: "My Samsung fridge isn't cooling" (Demo Mode / Cooling Off) and the power-cut display article (OF OF, 88 88 group, 21E group, child lock, display sleep, ten-second reboot); Samsung RS4000D user manual for the six-second procedure and the defrost warning.
• LG UK help library: OFF display, freezer fan error, digital and analog error codes (prefixes, FU, dH, CH/CL, Lo, gF), beeping with the door closed.
• Hotpoint UK, fridge freezer error codes page: E0 to E9 and EE, and the instruction to unplug before any part is replaced.
• Whirlpool UK FAQ and Beko UK support on the three-light scheme (green power, amber fast freeze, red high temperature).
• The published meaning of each code here is on its own page, with the source it was taken from.