--- title: "Start from what it is doing, not from what it is called." description: "Frigidaire refrigerator problems, washers that will not spin, ovens that will not heat — twenty-six behaviors described the way an owner describes them, not the way a manual does." url: "https://frigidairemiami.support/symptoms/" date_modified: "2026-09-09" --- # Symptoms archive ## Start from what it is doing, not from what it is called. Each page carries the free checks worth doing first, what it usually turns out to be, and how the answer changes with the age of the machine. 26 — behaviors written up 5 — appliances that display no code at all 23 — codes, where the maker documents one ## Twenty-six behaviors, in plain words Each page carries the free checks worth doing first, what it usually turns out to be, and how the answer changes depending on the machine you have. No symptoms are published yet. ## Half of these machines never say anything This maker documents error codes for the top-load washer, the dishwasher, the electric range and cooktop, and the refrigerator. For its dryers, its freezers, its wine cabinets and its ice machines it publishes nothing at all — no table, no list, no article. So on those machines there is nothing to look up, and the diagnosis starts from behavior and measurement: a thermometer left in overnight, a meter at the terminals, the run time listened to rather than read. These pages are written for that, and they say when a machine is not going to tell you anything. ## Where there is a code, it is usually short Nothing on this make alternates between halves and nothing arrives in two parts. The codes are single and short — F30, i20, E4, and a few two-letter words like Hd and SB — so what the panel shows is the whole of it. What is worth knowing is that the maker’s own answer to most of them is thirty seconds at the breaker. That is worth doing once, and it is also how the evidence gets thrown away: photograph the display first. ## Three minutes that change the visit If the machine shows something - Photograph it. On this make there is no way to ask the appliance for a code again once it has been cleared. - Copy the characters exactly, including letters. Hd is not HD and i20 is not I20 on the page you are looking for. - Note which appliance it is on. The same characters mean different things on a washer and on a range. - Do it before you cut power, not after. If it says nothing at all - On anything that makes cold, leave a thermometer in a glass of water overnight and read it before the door is opened. - Listen to whether the compressor is running constantly, cycling, or not running. You can hear which without any tools. - Look for frost where there should be none — it is the clearest evidence a quiet cabinet gives. - On laundry, note which stage of the cycle it fails at. That single fact narrows it more than anything else you can tell us. ## By appliance instead If you would rather begin from what it is than from what it is doing. ## Several of these end with us telling you not to book A dishwasher leaving plastics wet is drying by condensation and is working correctly. A washer that stops with a soaked load has been overruled by its own balance logic, usually by one comforter. A cabinet with no lights and a dead panel is often in Sabbath mode. We would rather write those down than take money for showing you a setting, and the pages say so where it applies. ## The questions this page is asked My problem is not on this list. — Call and describe it. Twenty-six pages is what we have written up rather than what we take on, and a behavior that is not here is a gap in our writing rather than in our work. Two things are wrong at once. — Say both when you book. A washer that leaks and will not spin is not two visits, but it is a different set of parts on the van than either alone, and knowing in advance is what keeps it to one. The machine cleared its own message. Have I lost anything? — Some of it. On this make there is no service display to ask for it again, so if the behavior is still there we work from what the machine does rather than from what it said. ## Why this archive matters more on this make than on most ### Five kinds of machine that never say anything This maker documents no error code at all for its dryers, its freezers, its wine cabinets or its ice machines. On those appliances there is nothing to look up, and the diagnosis is a thermometer, a meter and listening to what the machine is doing. These pages are written for that. ### What is free, and said first Each page opens with the checks that cost nothing, because on a volume badge a surprising share of calls end at a control lock, a filter, a level or a setting. We would rather write those down than be paid to point at them. ### Ours and the maker’s, kept apart Where a condition is documented, the maker’s own sentence is quoted and attributed. The reading around it — what it tends to mean in a building on this coast, with this humidity and this water — is ours, and it is written per page rather than repeated. ## Describe it in one sentence. What it does, when it does it, and what the panel shows if anything. That is usually enough for us to name the likely part before anybody sets off. --- **[Read full article: Symptoms archive](https://frigidairemiami.support/symptoms-archive/)**