How to Reset an LG Refrigerator (and When Not To)

Resetting is the first thing people try and it is worth doing, with one qualification: understand what it can and cannot achieve. A power cycle clears a control’s confusion. It does not repair a fan, a defrost heater, a sensor or a sealed system, and treating it as a fix is how a small fault becomes a warm fridge full of spoiled food.

The Power Cycle, Step by Step

1. Note what is wrong first, and write it down — the exact symptom, any code on the display, when it started. You are about to erase the machine’s own record of it
2. Take a photograph of the display if there is anything on it. Codes are easy to misremember and hard to recover
3. Unplug the refrigerator, or switch off its dedicated breaker if you cannot reach the plug. Do not simply switch the machine “off” at the panel, which is not the same thing
4. Wait five minutes. Less than that and the control may hold its state; longer does no harm but achieves nothing extra
5. Keep the doors shut during the wait so the cabinet loses as little cold as possible
6. Restore power and listen. Fans usually start promptly; the compressor may take several minutes
7. Set the temperatures to 38°F for fresh food and 0°F for the freezer, and leave them there
8. Give it a full day, then measure both compartments with a thermometer rather than trusting the display

That final step is the one people skip and the one that tells you whether the reset worked. A display showing the right number is not evidence — a machine with a drifting sensor will show whatever it believes.

What a Reset Can and Cannot Fix

The warm-fridge-cold-freezer row is the important one, because it is the most common refrigeration complaint and the one where a reset misleads most. Switching the machine off melts the ice that has built on the evaporator, so the fridge cools properly for a few days and then drifts warm again as the ice rebuilds. That is not a reset failing — it is a defrost fault confirming itself, and it is genuinely useful information. The full diagnosis is in freezer cold but fridge warm.

Check for Showroom Mode Before Anything Else

Worth ruling out first because it costs nothing and it explains a genuinely baffling symptom: a refrigerator whose lights and display work perfectly while the cabinet never gets cold. Many machines have a showroom or demonstration mode that keeps the panel and the lighting alive with the cooling disabled, so a retailer can display a unit without running it.

A machine delivered from a showroom floor can arrive with it still enabled, and it can also be triggered accidentally by a button combination. The indication varies by model — commonly something on the display such as an OFF or demo marking. Exiting it is a specific button sequence rather than a power cycle, and the sequence differs between models, so this is a case for your own manual rather than for guesswork.

Two tells: the machine has never been cold since it was delivered, or the display looks entirely healthy while nothing about the cabinet does. If either fits, check the manual before you check anything else.

Do Not Reset Before a Booked Visit

This is the one piece of advice on this page that will save you money. Modern refrigerators store fault information, and a power cycle can clear it. For an intermittent fault — one that appears for a day and then hides — that stored record is often the only hard evidence available, and once it is gone the technician is diagnosing a machine that is behaving itself.

So if you have already booked, leave the machine exactly as it is. Write down the symptom, photograph the display, note when it started and whether it faded over days or failed in a morning. If you need the fridge working in the meantime, do the reset — but hand over the notes and say plainly that you reset it and what it looked like before.

The same applies to settings. A machine diagnosed on the settings it failed with is diagnosed once; a machine that has been turned to its coldest and had every mode tried is a machine whose behaviour has been overwritten.

What Happens After Power Is Restored

• A delay before the compressor starts is normal and deliberate — restarting a compressor against pressure is what a protection delay exists to prevent
• Fans first, cooling second. You may hear air movement long before anything gets cold
• Several hours to reach temperature, and most of a day for a full cabinet
• The ice maker waits for the freezer to hold temperature, so first ice can be twelve to twenty-four hours away
• Discard the first few harvests of ice while the line flushes through
• A filter reminder may need clearing separately — it is a counter rather than a fault

The timings in full are in how long a fridge takes to get cold, and if no ice appears after a day, ice maker not making ice covers it.

If the Reset Does Not Hold

Then the fault is real, and the useful thing is that you have narrowed it. Read both compartments with a thermometer — that single pair of numbers splits the diagnosis in half. A cold freezer with a warm fridge means the sealed system is intact and the fault is airflow, defrost, a damper or a sensor. Both compartments warm points at heat rejection first and the sealed system second.

Two free checks before booking: vacuum and brush the condenser coils behind the lower grille, and confirm the machine has the clearance its manual asks for. On any refrigerator those are the commonest reason a machine slowly stops keeping up. The whole diagnosis is in refrigerator not cooling, and everything we cover on this make is on the LG appliance repair page.

One more thing worth doing before you pay anyone: check the paperwork. Some machines carry considerably longer coverage on specific major components — compressors and sealed-system parts in particular — and the terms vary by model, year and registration. Read your own documents rather than a general rule.

The Other Things People Mean by “Reset”

Four different operations get called resetting, and confusing them wastes time.

• Power cycle. What this page describes: power off, five minutes, power on. Clears the control’s state and nothing else
• Clearing a reminder. A filter or air-filter indicator is a counter, not a fault, and it survives a power cycle. It has its own button sequence
• Exiting a mode. Showroom, demo, vacation and energy-saving modes are settings. They need exiting by their own sequence and no amount of unplugging touches them
• Full defrost. Power off with the doors open for several hours to melt ice off the evaporator. This is a diagnostic test, and it is the one that reveals a defrost fault

Only the first and the last are about faults at all. If the machine is behaving oddly but cooling correctly, look at the reminders and modes before assuming anything mechanical — a fridge in vacation or energy-saving mode is doing exactly what it was told, and a display marked with a mode indication is not reporting a failure.

Protecting the Food While You Test

A five-minute power cycle costs the cabinet almost nothing, and there is no need to empty anything for it. A multi-hour defrost test is different: move perishables into a cooler with plenty of ice, or into a working freezer, before you start.

The rule worth following either way is the standard food-safety one rather than judgement by smell: perishables should not sit between 40°F and 140°F for more than two hours in total, and that clock includes any time the machine was already warm before you started testing. If a fridge has been drifting for a day before anyone noticed, the contents need assessing on that basis rather than on how they look. Follow current USDA guidance where you are unsure.

What the Repair Costs

Counted the same way across this whole site: a completed repair is a job billed above the $99 diagnostic. These are our own figures across all makes.

The faults a reset briefly hides — defrost, fans, dampers and sensors — all sit inside that middle half or below it. Part-by-part figures are in the refrigerator repair cost database.

Frequently Asked Questions