---
title: "Er, F or r: The Letter in Front of an LG Refrigerator Code"
description: "How to reset LG refrigerator, how to force the last code back onto the display, and why the prefix on that code names which coil is actually complaining."
url: "https://lgmiami.support/blog/which-evaporator-is-complaining/"
date_modified: "2026-09-05"
Category: "Troubleshooting"
---


# Er, F or r: The Letter in Front of an LG Refrigerator Code

## How to reset LG refrigerator, and get the code back first

Unplug it from the wall socket, wait about five minutes, and plug it back in. Put it back into the wall rather than a power strip or an extension lead, because several of the board and communication conditions on this make are supply problems wearing a component's clothes.

That is the maker's own first step for a long list of its codes, and the result is diagnostic in itself. A code that clears and never comes back was a power or communication event, and nothing is broken. A code that returns within a day has been re-detected rather than remembered, and it is real.

## First, get the code back

If there was a power cut, or somebody has already unplugged the machine, the display will have cleared and the condition will not have. LG gives you a way to retrieve it.

**Hold Freezer Temperature and Express Frz together for at least three seconds.** The last recorded code returns to the panel.

Do this before you reset anything. A code that has been cleared is information a technician no longer has, and it is the single most useful thing an owner can hand over.

## Now the part everybody drops

An LG refrigerator code has two halves, and most people write down one of them.

The **characters** name the component. dS is the defrost sensor. FS is the freezer temperature sensor. rS is the refrigerator temperature sensor. CF, FF and rF are three different fans.

The **letter in front** names which cooling system is reporting it.

**Er** means a cabinet with a single evaporator. One coil, one compartment to open, no ambiguity.

**F** means the freezer coil of a cabinet that has two separate evaporators.

**r** means the refrigerator coil of that same cabinet.

On a two-evaporator machine those two coils sit behind different panels in different compartments. So "dS" on its own does not say which side of the machine is opened — and getting that wrong means a compartment emptied, defrosted and reassembled for nothing, then the same again on the other side.

## Why some cabinets have two

A single evaporator makes cold in one place and divides it, usually with a motorized damper that meters air from the freezer into the fresh food compartment. It is simpler and it is what most refrigerators do.

Two evaporators give each compartment its own cooling, which holds humidity better in the fresh food side and stops smells moving between them. It also means the two halves can fail independently — which is why a cabinet that keeps its freezer hard while the fridge drifts is behaving like a two-evaporator machine, and why the prefix exists at all.

## What to write down

Everything on the panel, exactly as shown, including spaces. Er dS and F dS are different pages on this site and different visits in practice.

If your machine is showing something that is not on our list at all, tell us the characters exactly and the model number. LG has used several panel generations and a code can be printed slightly differently between them — and we would rather find out about one we have not published than guess at it.

## The group that all share one instruction

There is a long list of LG refrigerator codes — Od, Sd, CI, IU, dH, d1, d2, d, H1, H2, F1, F2, US, LS, E1, E2, r, Id, gS and gF — that the maker groups under a single answer, because they all mean the same thing to somebody standing in a kitchen: the machine has found something wrong inside itself and wants a technician rather than an adjustment.

For those, the reset above is the whole of what an owner can usefully do. If the code stays, minimize how much the doors are opened and book it. The maker's own warning is worth repeating: do not take the refrigerator apart to look. The parts behind that panel are not homeowner parts.

---

**[Read full article: Er, F or r: The Letter in Front of an LG Refrigerator Code](https://lgmiami.support/blog/which-evaporator-is-complaining/)**