Whirlpool microwave fault codes
Whirlpool publish two sets of microwave fault codes that disagree with each other, and the one you can find as an owner is the one that describes oven parts. These pages use the service tech sheet as the spine and say where the public pages contradict it.
Where the code shows on a Whirlpool
Whirlpool use an F-and-E scheme — F1E4, F2E1, F4E9 — where the F number is roughly the subsystem and the E number the specific condition. Their 2020 service tech sheet for an over-the-range convection microwave — a hood-mounted format sold in North America rather than the UK — lists nine and only nine: F1E4, F2E1, F4E1, F4E4, F4E9, F8E5, and then FCE2, FCE3 and FCE7, which are Wi-Fi rather than hardware. Their public product-help site lists about seventy F-codes under the same appliance heading, of which only around twenty can happen on a microwave — anything naming an upper or lower oven cavity, a self-clean door latch, a water boiler or a water conductivity sensor belongs to another appliance on the same platform. The site also carries hex-style strings such as 1c1c, 3d31 and 9d62, and plain-language displays including Locked, PUSH, Probe and a flashing clock, none of which is a fault code. If your display shows a four-character code beginning F, count the characters: F#E# is this scheme, and a lone F followed by a number is the older two-digit one.
How to reset a Whirlpool
Whirlpool put the same instruction at the head of their own failure-code table, and it is unusually specific about the timing: many of the problems in the chart may be solved by power cycling — unplug the microwave or disconnect power, wait one minute, then reconnect. Their public pages give the same procedure at the consumer unit rather than the plug, which is what you need for a built-in with no reachable socket: switch the breaker off for one minute, switch it back on, then watch the appliance for a further minute to see whether the code returns before you try to cook anything. That second minute is part of their instruction and it is the part people skip. If the code comes back within it, the power cycle has told you something real and the next step is a diagnosis rather than another cycle. Nothing in any Whirlpool microwave procedure asks an owner to remove a panel, and on a microwave nothing should.
Most common Whirlpool faults
The Whirlpool codes people look up most.
- F1E4Get it checkedThe board running the microwave side, or the relay it switches power through, has failed a self-check. One of the codes both Whirlpool sources agree on.
- F2E1Usually simple to fixA button is being read as held down. Whirlpool call it a stuck key failure, and it is the one public page in this family that is not about an oven.
- F4E1Get it checkedThe cavity temperature sensor is reading outside what the control will accept. Whirlpool’s two sources describe it slightly differently but not incompatibly.
- F1E5Get it checkedThe inverter or the magnetron tube. This is the code behind the classic symptom of a microwave that runs perfectly and heats nothing.
Every Whirlpool fault code
9 published codes. Filtering happens in the page — every one is in the HTML.
Showing 9 of 9 codes
Whirlpool models
Codes can differ between generations. Check yours.
Guides that help with Whirlpool faults
How to reset a microwave, and what the display means
Every make says unplug it, but the seconds differ. What each brand publishes, the displays that are not faults, and what to do with a code nobody publishes.Read the guideMicrowave faults: what you can fix, what you must not open
The plug fuse, the door, the waveguide cover and a mug of water are yours. Everything behind the casing is not, and unplugging it does not change that.Read the guide
Looking for Whirlpool’s own support? whirlpoolservice.co.uk. We are not affiliated with Whirlpool.