93 codes · 39 signals · 3 manufacturers

There is no such thing as a Kenmore error code. Every one of these belongs to the company that built your appliance.

Kenmore manufactures nothing, so the characters on your display are Whirlpool's, LG's or Frigidaire's. Which one depends on the first three digits of your model number, and reading a code against the wrong company's table gives you a confident answer pointing at the wrong part. Every page here names the manufacturer, cites the document, and lists the prefixes it applies to.

Book a diagnostic (305) 680-1018

93 codes with a published meaning
39 signals and indicators
3 manufacturers covered
0 codes we made up

The whole archive

Every code and signal, by manufacturer and appliance

Filter by the company that built your appliance, then by the appliance itself. Both filters matter and the first one matters more.

The manufacturer comes first on this make. The same characters appear in more than one company's table meaning unrelated things, and the three digits before the period on your rating plate are what tells them apart.

The distinction that costs the most

The first three digits decide which table your code lives in

110 is Whirlpool, 796 is LG, 790 is Frigidaire. Their code schemes overlap enough to be convincing — several use F-and-number pairs for entirely unrelated conditions — so a code looked up on a page that does not name the manufacturer is a coin toss dressed as an answer. Read the prefix, then read the code. Ten seconds, and it decides whether the right component gets replaced.

What the first three digits mean

A torch beam on a rating plate in a dark space.

What is deliberately not on this page

Where a manufacturer publishes nothing, so do we

Roper publishes no codes at all, so a 911 range has no table here and is diagnosed by symptom. Whirlpool names fourteen refrigerator F-codes and never says what separates one from another, so there is one honest page saying that rather than fourteen invented ones. Frigidaire’s dryer code page exists with an empty body, and its SY and Er refrigerator codes are named and left undefined. Nobody publishes a cooktop, range hood or standalone ice maker table. A page that can say nothing is not a page.

Start from what the appliance is doing

A close view of the digital display window on an appliance fascia in a dark kitchen, the screen completely dark and blank with no characters, digits or symbols of any kind on it, brushed metal around it holding one warm reflection, everything else in deep shadow.

Reading a code properly

Four things that decide whether a lookup is even valid

Photograph it first

Cutting power clears the display, and cutting power is the first thing most people try.
Include the digits after the letter — F3 and F8 are different families.
On machines with no display, count the flashes and the pauses.

Find your prefix

The three digits before the period on the rating plate.
They name the manufacturer, and the manufacturer owns the code.
Kenmore, Elite and Pro tell you nothing useful here.

Watch the case and the shape

LG prints duct-block codes as d8O and dGs because of how a segment display draws digits — no LG document prints d80 with plain numerals.
LG's own manual writes the control lock as [L where the help library writes CL.
On a two-character display LG shows LE first and then the 1, so LE and LE1 look alike for a moment and are different findings.

Know what is not a problem

Power failure, control lock, Sabbath mode, demonstration mode and tub-clean reminders are all published as codes and none of them is a defect.
39 of the entries on this page are signals rather than errors.
A number in a Frigidaire dishwasher display is a delay-start setting in hours.

Nothing on the display to look up

Then the behavior is the way in

Some of the companies behind this nameplate issue no table whatsoever. Where that is true, the behavior is not a hint — it is the diagnosis.

Everything works except the cold
Refrigerator not cooling

The call we take more often than any other, and on this badge the one where the number on the sticker changes the answer most. Three different manufacturers built the Kenmore refrigerators in South Florida kitchens, and they arrive at a warm cabinet by different routes and report it in different words.
- Three builders, three first suspects
- Two settings account for a real share of these
- The sealed system is last, not first
What it usually means
One half working and the other not
Refrigerator warm and freezer cold

A specific and useful symptom, because it says the cold is being made and is not getting where it needs to go. That rules out most of the expensive answers before anybody opens anything, and it points at a short list that is the same on every builder.
- The cold is being made — it is not arriving
- Rules out the sealed system almost immediately
- Usually defrost, a fan, or a damper
What it usually means

The bin is empty and nothing is obviously broken
Ice maker not making ice

One of the most over-quoted repairs there is. Ice production depends on freezer temperature and on water arriving, and both are cheaper to fix than the ice maker itself — so the sequence matters more here than on almost any other symptom.
- Freezer temperature before the module
- Water supply before the mechanism
- A silted saddle valve is a local classic
What it usually means
Water in the crisper, or on the floor
Refrigerator leaking water

Where the water lands is rarely where it comes from. There are only four realistic sources on these cabinets, and telling them apart is quick once you know where to look — which is why this is one of the symptoms most worth describing carefully on the phone.
- Water inside and water outside are different problems
- A blocked defrost drain is the commonest cause
- In this climate condensation is a real answer
What it usually means
More ice than there should be, and it keeps coming back
Frost building up in the freezer

The first question is which kind of freezer you have, because on one of them frost is the design. A manual-defrost chest freezer is supposed to accumulate it; an automatic-defrost upright is not, and on that one the frost is telling you something.
- On a chest freezer this is normal
- On an automatic-defrost cabinet it is not
- Where the frost sits tells you which problem it is
What it usually means
It still works — there is just less of it every month
Standalone ice maker making less ice

A dedicated ice machine rarely stops. It declines, quietly, over a year, and most households notice only when they run out at a party. On this water the reason is almost always mineral collecting on the surfaces the machine depends on, and that is preventable.
- Decline rather than failure is the signature
- No maker publishes a code table for these
- Which stage the cycle stops at is the diagnosis
What it usually means
Standing water in the bottom after a finished cycle
Dishwasher not draining

Three manufacturers built the Kenmore dishwashers in South Florida kitchens and all three publish a code for this, in three different alphabets. Which one you are reading decides which table it means something in — and a code read against the wrong maker points confidently at the wrong part.
- A little water in the sump is normal
- The disposer plug is free to check and often the answer
- Three builders, three different codes for one condition
What it usually means

Every symptom we cover

If your code is not here

This is what the manufacturers publish, not everything the appliance can log

Their own documentation says as much. Several of these companies keep service-level codes that never reach a consumer page, and one of them names fourteen refrigerator codes without defining any of them. Characters on your display that are absent from this page are not imaginary — they are undocumented publicly, and their meaning has to be established at the appliance.

Give us three digits from the plate and a description of the behavior, and we will say what it commonly proves to be. Those digits identify the company that built the machine, which is where everything on this site begins.

Call (305) 680-1018 Describe it in the form

Before you call

Questions about codes

Is this code a Kenmore code?

No. Kenmore manufactures nothing, so every code on an appliance wearing this badge belongs to the company that built it. That is why each page here names the manufacturer and links to the document the meaning was read from.

Will unplugging it clear the code?

Often, and several of these manufacturers ask for exactly that — thirty seconds at the breaker is Frigidaire's own first step on a whole family of codes. A code that returns immediately after a full power cycle is not a glitch. Photograph it before you clear it.

My machine has no display, only lights.

Then the lights are the code. Whirlpool publishes flashing-light patterns that correspond to its numbered codes, so counting the flashes and the pauses gives you the same information. Tell us the pattern when you call.

I found a longer list of Kenmore codes somewhere else.

Then some of it was written rather than read. We publish what the manufacturers publish and nothing else, and we name the document each entry came from. Where a maker names a code and does not define it, we say that instead of filling in the gap.

In more detail

What Kenmore repair actually involves in Miami

Why every code here names a manufacturer

Because the code belongs to the manufacturer and not to the badge. Kenmore commissioned appliances from Whirlpool, LG, Frigidaire, GE, Broan, Roper and Bosch, and each of those companies wrote its own diagnostic language. They overlap: several use an F followed by a number, several use two letters, and several use PF for a power failure. A code read against the wrong table is a confident answer pointing at the wrong component.

Where each family came from

The Whirlpool entries were read from the manufacturer’s own product-help site. The LG entries come from LG-hosted owner’s manuals, with the manual’s exact wording where the manual carried it, plus LG’s own help library. The Frigidaire entries come from Electrolux North America’s own owner support system. No repair blog, forum or parts-store list is a source anywhere on this site.

Codes and signals are different things

39 of the entries here are not errors at all. Power failure notices, control locks, Sabbath and demonstration modes, filter reminders and tub-clean alarms are all published in the same tables as genuine problems, and mistaking one for the other is how a working appliance gets a service call. They are labeled separately for that reason.

What we do with a code

Read it against the right company’s table, then confirm it at the appliance. A code names a circuit rather than a component, and the measurement is what turns one into the other. Send the characters and three digits from the plate, and a likely part can generally be named before anybody sets off.

The characters on the display, and three digits from the plate.

Between them we can generally name a likely part before arriving. The figure itself is settled once somebody has seen the appliance.

Schedule a visit Call (305) 680-1018

This article is based on:

Official manufacturer documentation
Internal repair procedures
Technician repair history
Company quality standards

There is no such thing as a Kenmore error code. Every one of these belongs to the company that built your appliance.

Photograph it first

Find your prefix

Watch the case and the shape

Know what is not a problem

Refrigerator not cooling

Refrigerator warm and freezer cold

Ice maker not making ice

Refrigerator leaking water

Frost building up in the freezer

Standalone ice maker making less ice

Dishwasher not draining