E01, E02 or E03 on an own-label microwavea plain-English guide
One inherited fault table printed under five UK badges. If your microwave shows E01, E02 or E03, the brand on the front is probably not who wrote it.
Take care
What this means
Search for E01 on a microwave and you will find pages for half a dozen different brands, all saying much the same thing, and the reason is not that they copied each other. It is that they are the same appliance. Daewoo’s 30-litre convection model is platform D90N30; De’Longhi sell a 30-litre convection microwave whose manual gives the model designator D90N30. Statesman’s combination model prints the same three-part protection table, and so do Sharp’s two combination manuals. Five badges, one original equipment manufacturer, one fault table inherited with the hardware.
At platform level the three codes mean this. E01 is overheat protection, and the two causes the tables name are the fan not working and the appliance having been run for a long time while empty. E02 is low temperature protection, with the causes given as the temperature sensor lead not being installed properly and the grill or convection function not working — a reading impossibly low rather than a cavity that is too cold. E03 is sensor malfunction protection, and the tables are specific: the system sensor is short circuited.
Then the part that catches people out, which is that the button differs by badge even though the fault does not. Daewoo say press STOP/CANCEL. Statesman and De’Longhi say PAUSE/CANCEL. Sharp say STOP/ECO. And one rule predicts whether your appliance can show any of these at all: only the convection and combination models publish the table. Two of seventeen Daewoo manuals carry it, both grill-and-convection; Statesman’s solo model has none; twenty-five of twenty-seven Sharp manuals have none. A solo microwave showing something that looks like E01 is showing something nobody has documented.
What causes it
| Cause | What is actually happening | How likely |
|---|---|---|
| Overheat protection tripped, on E01 | The fan not running, or the appliance run empty for a long period. Both are named in the platform’s own fault table for this code. | Common |
| Sensor lead or heating function, on E02 | The tables give the sensor lead not being fitted properly and the grill or convection not working, which produce an impossibly low reading. | Common |
| Short circuit in the sensor wiring, on E03 | The one cause these manuals state without hedging. A near-zero resistance reading is not a temperature any cavity could be at. | Common |
| A typo in your own manual | One Daewoo model prints E01 as "Over Weight/time protection", which is their misprint of overheat protection and sends people looking for a weight fault. | Occasional |
What to try yourself
Find the cancel button your badge uses, because the code is shared and the button is not: STOP/CANCEL on Daewoo, PAUSE/CANCEL on Statesman and De’Longhi, STOP/ECO on Sharp.
On E01, cool the appliance before you clear anything. Open the door, leave it twenty minutes, and only then press cancel — the code came from a temperature and the button does not lower one.
Do not run the appliance empty to test whether it is fixed. Operating it empty is one of the two causes these manuals name for E01 in the first place.On E01, check the fan is moving air by holding a hand above the vents during a short cycle, and clear anything stacked against the back or the sides.
On E02, work out whether plain microwaving still works and only the grill or convection fails. That split points at the oven side of the appliance and is worth telling an engineer.
On E03, give it one cancel and one power cycle and then stop. A short circuit in sensor wiring is inside the case, and no microwave fault justifies removing the cover.
Before paying for a repair, weigh it against the appliance. These are budget combination microwaves, and a sensor fault with a call-out is often most of the replacement price.
Get a qualified appliance engineer to look at your microwave
We do not pass enquiries to a repair firm, so there is no form here. When you book a qualified appliance engineer, tell them the make, the model and the exact code or message on the display, and ask whether they carry parts for this make — that is what turns one visit into a repair rather than a quote.
What it costs to fix
Typical repair cost
£0–£160
Time on site
30 minutes
Nothing on an E01 that needed cooling and a clear vent. A sensor, its wiring or a fan with a visit is typically £90 to £160 — on appliances that frequently cost less than twice that new, which is the honest thing to say before anyone books a repair.
Typical UK prices including parts and labour, updated September 2026. Your quote may differ.
Own this appliance and had this code? . Nothing is published until a person has read it.
Related microwave fault codes
- Not heating but runningGet it checkedThe light is on, the turntable is going round and the food comes out cold. This is the classic microwave failure and none of it is an owner repair.Related: same brand
- Microwave completely deadGet it checkedNo display, no light, no fan. On a microwave this is very often a safety system working as designed, and fitting a new fuse is the wrong repair.Related: same brand
- Is my microwave leakingGet it checkedThere is a published UK limit and a real test for this, and the door seal is what usually fails it. What there is not, is a way to check it at home.Related: same brand
- Sparking inside the microwaveGet it checkedBright arcing and a scorched smell. Look at the small panel on the cavity wall before you run it again — a burnt waveguide cover is the usual answer.Related: same brand
- Turntable not turningUsually simple to fixFood heats in patches and the plate sits still. Almost always the coupler, the roller ring or a plate seated wrongly, and mostly fixable in the cavity.Related: same brand
- Ran the microwave emptyGet it checkedRunning a microwave with nothing in it is the one thing an owner can do that reliably damages it, and the service manuals put it in capitals.Related: same brand
Related guides
Common questions
My manual says "Over Weight/time protection". What is that?
A misprint. It appears in one Daewoo convection manual against E01, where the neighbouring model calls the same code overheat protection with the same two causes. We rendered the page to check it was not a text-extraction artefact, and Daewoo really did print it. There is no weight sensor involved.
Is Beko’s E-3 the same as E03?
No, and this is the trap worth knowing. Beko publish E-3 on their built-in models only, and it is about the door: their table gives the reason as the oven door not opening because of an obstruction in front of it or low voltage, and the remedy as unplugging and plugging back in after ten seconds. Different code, different family, different fault.
What about Swan’s Err0 and Err1?
The same subsystem, differently labelled, and worth a warning about sourcing. A Swan-branded manual gives Err0 as the sensor being short circuited and Err1 as the sensor being open circuit. Swan have never published that manual on the web — not on their site, not through the retailer, and not at any point in the Internet Archive’s record of their domain — so the wording above comes from a Swan-branded document obtainable only from third-party archives.
Does the badge on the front matter at all?
For the fault, barely. For getting it fixed, yes: the warranty, the parts channel and the phone number are the badge’s, not the platform’s. Order parts by the model number on the rating plate rather than by the platform string, even though the platform string is what tells you why your manual matches somebody else’s.
Technical review
Not reviewed by an engineer
No engineer has read this page. Severity follows what the manufacturer publishes, and we would rather tell you that than let a byline imply a sign-off.
Sources and how we verified this
We establish the facts from the sources below and then write the explanation ourselves. We do not copy manufacturer wording and we do not host their manuals.
- Manufacturer technical and service documentation
This page has not been reviewed by an engineer, and we would rather tell you that than imply otherwise. The severity rating follows what the manufacturer publishes: where they say isolate the appliance and call someone, so do we.