In the past week, I have seen this happen three times and then go away. I am getting concerned. Here is what happens: open the left door and close it again, the panel lights show 88/-88/snowflake and the filter and lock lights go on and stay on, the thing beeps three times. If you open/close the left door again, you can see the panel quickly display normal info then goes and does this. Once it gets this way, opening/closing the right door or the freezer has no impact. What's up? Thanks

I don't know, but you can look in these manuals and see what you can find: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8010163/Whirlpool%20Refrigerators.zip

I don't know, but you can look in these manuals and see what you can find: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8010163/Whirlpool%20Refrigerators.zip

Hi and thanks for the reply. After posting yesterday, the lights had not changed and I was starting to get concerned that something might go wrong and spoil a bunch of food. So I put a digital thermometer in there. After about 5 minutes, I checked and it showed 30 degrees (while the fridge is set to 37). Not sure if the temp was actually too low or it was a false reading for some reason.

I then found myself thinking: this thing has a computer of some sort in it. As a computer programmer, I wondered if it might need a reboot. So I turned off the circuit breaker, let it sit two minutes, and turned it back on. Now everything looks normal. The temp is back around 37 on the digital thermometer.

I will keep a close eye on this beast. Cheers!

Hey, that's good thinking. Just had to reboot my computer because one of the drives was not working and it fixed it. Your refrigerator has thermistors that the computer uses to sense the temps all over it. You test them with a digital ohm meter. The values are in the manuals I put up for you to download. They are pretty standard and the temp range determines what the value will be. The values only change by the location of the sensor, so they are basically the same from model to model as long as the purpose is the same. They do fail and will cause strange things to happen, or you can have a bug in the program, as you had. Sometimes we never know why computers do what they do. Good luck with that. I prefer refrigerators without all the electronics even though I have been a refrigeration mechanic for over 35 years.

Hey, that's good thinking. Just had to reboot my computer because one of the drives was not working and it fixed it. Your refrigerator has thermistors that the computer uses to sense the temps all over it. You test them with a digital ohm meter. The values are in the manuals I put up for you to download. They are pretty standard and the temp range determines what the value will be. The values only change by the location of the sensor, so they are basically the same from model to model as long as the purpose is the same. They do fail and will cause strange things to happen, or you can have a bug in the program, as you had. Sometimes we never know why computers do what they do. Good luck with that. I prefer refrigerators without all the electronics even though I have been a refrigeration mechanic for over 35 years.

Thanks, I too prefer the older, simpler stuff. We moved about 5 years ago and our new house has all new stuff. Without exception, the appliances we had in our old place (which we now rent out) were far superior (at least in terms or reliability). It still has a Frigidaire range, Philco manual defrost fridge (the beer fridge), and Maytag clothes drier from the 1960's and 70's (some may be older). I have easily been able to work on the range and drier. Never had to do anything to the Philco. The power companies talk about how wasteful the old fridges were. But I have put a kill-a-watt meter on the old Philco and at current rates, the electric bill to run it for a year is only about $17 more than our Energy Star, GE Profile unit that cost $1000 and on which I have already had to do multiple service calls (and re-soldered a relay to the control board myself). Some call this progress...

The new refrigerators use R-134a which needs 50% more horsepower to cool the same amount of space that the old R-12 refrigerators did. R-134a also kills the gas mileage on your car because it really eats up the horsepower there. The EPA laws banning the old refrigerants were enacted on a scam of an ozone hole that naturally opens up over Antarctica for two weeks a year in late September due to the earth being at a perfect right angle to the sun. Ozone is produced by the ultraviolet light, so when the earth is perfectly straight up and down in relation to the sun the earth's own ozone layer shields the part right over the poles from ultraviolet radiation for two weeks a year. Nothing will change that, and all "freons" are 5 times heavier than air and sink rather than rise. You can fill a bucket with the gas and it will be there years from now because it's so heavy. These liberals make all these claims about dire things happening when these heavier-than-air gases rise up in the atmosphere, but they fail to tell you that it is impossible for such a gas to rise; it's the same as getting BBs to float in water! That's why they have to put all of these electronics on a refrigerator because of the inherent inefficiency of R134a. You home AC running on R410 is also very inefficient and costs 50% more to cool the same, if it cools well at all. Most do not unless a bigger unit is put in. These laws need to be repealed because two weeks after they were enacted they found out we were scammed, but they did not repeal the laws then because it's part of the conspiracy to take our energy from us.

Hi and thanks for the reply. After posting yesterday, the lights had not changed and I was starting to get concerned that something might go wrong and spoil a bunch of food. So I put a digital thermometer in there. After about 5 minutes, I checked and it showed 30 degrees (while the fridge is set to 37). Not sure if the temp was actually too low or it was a false reading for some reason.

I then found myself thinking: this thing has a computer of some sort in it. As a computer programmer, I wondered if it might need a reboot. So I turned off the circuit breaker, let it sit two minutes, and turned it back on. Now everything looks normal. The temp is back around 37 on the digital thermometer.

I will keep a close eye on this beast. Cheers!

Well, it is about 24 hours after I did this reset and the darn thing has done it again. This time, when I opened the door, the digital thermometer was reading about 45 degrees which is way too warm compared to the usual 37 degrees at which I keep the thing set. So I have just re-done the reset, waited 15 minutes, and now see the temp has fallen to 41. Not sure if this 24 hour cycle will repeat itself again tomorrow. But if it does, is there something that happens once every 24 hours or so that could cause this?

Sound a lot like something in the defrost system is not working right. You are going to have to get a good digital meter and begin testing the thermistors, first. The ones in the freezer around the coil would be the ones I would suspect. Look into the PDF manual that most closely matches your unit for reference. You may be able to get a repair manual by calling customer support. If you can get one I would like a copy sent to my email account, or put it in the Public folder on your Dropbox.com account (free) and send me a link by right-clicking on it on the Dropbox folder in your computer and choosing "Copy public link" then paste into an email. I will help you all I can.

A little more info, perhaps... It has been a couple days since I have last removed/restored power in an attempt to reset the fridge. So far, no return of the all-lights-on phenomenon. However, my wife pointed out to me (and I have confirmed) that even though the door was open for more than 30 seconds or so, the door open beeper/warning was not going off. Usually this happens within 30 seconds and is something that generally pisses my wife off. So I just removed/restored power to the unit and the door open warning is again going off within 30 seconds. I am not sure what this means but it is more strange behavior. Thanks for your thoughts on this.

See if this cures the problem, but I still think it would be a good idea to buy a meter and check out things like the defrost heater. You also need to check your coils to make sure that they are clean. I used to find quite a few refrigerators by the road which only needed their coils cleaned to work perfectly for many more years. (They still work fine after 15 years.) Little things to us are big things to the appliances because they have to breathe to work and all it takes is dust to keep them from working.

It is now perhaps a month since I started this thread. Until today, I have generally been able to keep things running fine by turning off power for 5 minutes when the fridge acted-up. As of now, however, this does not seem to help. But the symptoms are different. Instead of all front panel lights on, unresponsive buttons, and beeping, I get no front panel lights, no beeping, and unresponsive buttons. And removing power for 5 minutes no longer changes anything. And I have noticed both before today if I did not remove power when the fridge acted-up the temp in the fridge started to drop well below the 37 for which it was set. I am noticing the same today.

All of this appears to be quite similar to what is described in this thread (http://applianceguru.com/forum1/18908.html). However I have checked the continuity between the door panel connector and the connector at the left upper hinge several times, including today, and I have always gotten solid continuity on all 4 wires. So I do not think I am suffering from the same problem as that poster (broken wires inside the left door). Today when I did this check, I had the power off for maybe 30 minutes. I note that when I re-applied power, the panel lights came on normally. But none of the buttons respond at all.

Therefore, it seems to me that the issue could be either the main circuit card or the card on the front panel. I have visually inspected the front panel card while I had the dispenser off to check the continuity of the wires. I sure did not see anything visually wrong like a bad solder joint or a bulging capacitor. That does not mean it is OK, only that I could not see anything.

Is it at all likely that the front panel card could be bad or is it more likely that it is the main card? Any other ideas? Thanks

Take a look at the condenser coil and if dirty wash it out with spray cleaner and wash out with sprayer on water hose. Clean fan blades, too. If it's running hot enough to burn out a compressor it will cause several problems with the circuits. After you have eliminated this you can go to trouble shooting the rest. See if these help: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8010163/Whirlpool%20Refrigerators.zip

It seems now that I have finally been able to confirm that my problem is virtually identical to that shown in this thread (http://applianceguru.com/forum1/18908.html). In my case, I seem to have troubles with only a single wire - the orange one running from front panel up and through the left hinge. Until now it has shown continuity when I tested it but the problem was intermittent so I just could have been testing at a good time. Today, I was able to test and get no continuity. So I have patched-in a wire exterior to the door and all is working fine now. The above thread and others I have seen for fancy 3-door fridges suggest that the main "fix" for this is an expensive, new door. Holy crap! And over time other wires going into the door may fail as well.