--- title: "Start from what it is doing, because on the cold side that is all you get." description: "Whirlpool washer problems — symptoms archive." url: "https://whirlpoolmiami.support/symptoms/" date_modified: "2026-09-06" --- # Symptoms archive ## Start from what it is doing, because on the cold side that is all you get. Most people do not have a code. On a Whirlpool refrigerator most people cannot have one: the make publishes no code list for a top-freezer cabinet and nine pages for a side-by-side. These pages start from the behavior instead, name the likely causes in the order they are worth checking, and link to the code the machine would show if it had one. 28 — symptom pages 10 — of them in the laundry room 5 — on cabinets that barely report 599 — code pages behind them ## What it is doing Each page separates the checks that cost nothing from the ones that need a technician, and says which of this make's codes belong to it — or that none do. No symptoms are published yet. ## Four things that look like a breakdown and are not **Control lock.** A range or a wall oven showing LOC, and a cooktop showing Lock, has the keypad locked out. Five seconds on START/ENTER for the range, three on LOCK for the cooktop, and it is over. **Demo mode.** A range set up for a shop floor answers every keypress and never heats. **Suds.** A washer showing Sud has found too many suds to spin against and is adding water to break them, which looks exactly like a cycle that will not end. **Cooling turned off.** A refrigerator can be lit, responsive and deliberately not cooling, with COOLING OFF on the display; on the common panel it is LOCK and MEASURED FILL held together for three seconds, in both directions. Between them these account for a real share of the calls we take. ## Three appliances with nothing to translate A top-freezer refrigerator, an upright freezer and a gas cooktop: this make publishes 82, 63 and 52 support pages for them respectively and **not one code page among the three**. On those the symptom page is not a way in to a code table — it is the diagnosis, written as measurement. Temperature in each compartment, airflow at the vents, frost on the evaporator, current at the compressor. On a gas cooktop it is the igniter, the spark module, the burner cap seated straight and the port that has silted up, none of which reports anything to anybody. Saying that plainly is worth more than borrowing a table from the appliance next door. ## Write it down before you cut the power Both halves of the code - Watch the display for a few seconds before writing anything down. A Whirlpool alternates between the two halves of its code, and half a code is not an address. - Photograph it twice, once on each half. Nobody remembers which came first, and the order is worth having. - Say which appliance it is on. The same characters are a different report on a washer, a dryer and a range, and they are different pages here. - Do not cut the power first. The display clears and the condition does not, and the code is the most useful thing a first visit can start from. If it is a refrigerator or a freezer - There may be no code to find. This make publishes none at all for a top-freezer cabinet, and nine pages in total for a side-by-side. - Tell us which indicator lights are on instead — cooling off, door alarm, air filter, H2O. On this side of the house those do most of the reporting. - Put a glass of water in the fresh food compartment overnight and a thermometer in it. A measured temperature beats a description of one. - Look under the crisper drawers for water. A blocked defrost drain puts it there long before it reaches the floor. ## Or look the code up directly One page per code per appliance, because the same characters are not the same repair on a washer and on a range. ## Watch the display for ten seconds before you write anything down Whirlpool’s own dryer documentation puts it plainly: a code beginning with F appears **alternating between F# and E#**. The panel shows you one half, then the other, in the same window. That is why so many people arrive with half a code — they wrote down what was on the glass when they looked. Stand there for a full cycle of it, photograph both halves, and you have an address instead of a fragment. ## Questions about reading a symptom There is no code at all. Is that worse? — Not usually, and on this make it is often just normal. Whirlpool publishes almost nothing for its refrigerators and freezers, so an absence of code there tells you nothing about how serious it is. Elsewhere a symptom with no code usually points at something mechanical — a blocked duct, a loaded filter, a seal that has stopped sealing — which is generally the cheaper half of this trade. I only caught half the code. Is that enough? — Sometimes, and it is worth going back for the other half anyway. The display alternates between the two halves, so half a code narrows it to a family rather than to a part — and on this platform one family can cover a sensor, the wiring to it and the board reading it. Ten seconds in front of the panel is the cheapest diagnostic step there is. The code cleared by itself. Should I still call? — Note both halves somewhere before you forget them, then watch whether it comes back. A code that arrived with a power event and never returns is not a repair — this make publishes PF for exactly that, a cycle interrupted by a power failure. One that reappears, even a week later, is the same condition, and an intermittent problem is a cheaper thing to catch than a settled one. Can I keep using it meanwhile? — It depends entirely on what it is doing. A hood whose lamp has gone is a cosmetic wait. A dryer that smells hot, or a microwave that runs on its own, is not — that one comes out of the wall today. We will say plainly which of those yours is when you call. ## Why the symptom comes before the code on this make ### The code archive is no use until you have a code An error code is excellent information, and on a Whirlpool it is unevenly available. In the laundry room and at the range you will usually have one. At the refrigerator you usually will not, and that is the make rather than a gap in this research: zero code pages for a top-freezer cabinet, zero for an upright freezer, nine for a side-by-side. These pages start where the owner actually is — in front of a machine doing something — and turn that into something a technician can act on. ### What this climate changes Nine wet months a year is hard on door seals, defrost drains and dryer ducts, and those three sit behind a large share of the calls we take here. A gasket that would last a decade inland hardens sooner; a defrost drain ices sooner and puts water under the crisper rather than on the floor where you would see it; a dryer vent hood corrodes half open and packs with lint, and the machine simply runs longer instead of complaining. None of that is a defect in the appliance. It is what this coast does to an appliance that is working. ## Tell us what it is doing, and what the panel shows. If there is a code, watch it alternate and give us both halves. If it is the refrigerator, tell us which indicator lights are on and what a thermometer says in each compartment. --- **[Read full article: Symptoms archive](https://whirlpoolmiami.support/symptoms-archive/)**