Smeg Freezer Red Flashing light and beeping

[Jason_K]

Good Morning and Happy Christmas!!
I have a built-in Smeg freezer VI205pnf. Have come down this morning to flashing red light and regular beep. Have had this before when door was left ajar and just used the reset function as advised in manual. Turn temp knob to reset. This isn’t working today. There is no ‘click’ when set to reset. Have turned knob to off, disconnected unit from mains. Plugged in again and turned knob back to medium. No change.
It feels like the temp knob isn’t doing anything. Food is starting to defrost

https://www.manualslib.com/manual/966662/Smeg-Vi205pnf.html?page=6#manual

Any ideas most welcome, thanks

[Jason_K]

It’s now making a nasty grinding noise….

[Specialist01269]

I don’t normally do refrigeration but the 1st thing I’d do is unplug for 30 minutes to try re – setting.

[Jason_K]

Hi, thanks. A chap on another forum suggested leaving it unplugged for 4 hours… going to try that

[Specialist01269]

Aah, so another 4 hours of your food defrosting.

[electrofix]

from the sound of it this will lead to the total loss of your food. if you have family with spare freezer space now is the time to act

Dave

[Jason_K]

Plugged it in again after 45 mins… no change.
Yes, a lot of the food will be going in the bin 🙁

[kwatt]

It is a frost free unit so it could be a number of things, there’s not any obvious issues that jump out.

Sp, fan motor, sensor/s, compressor and so on could all be suspects but a grinding noise would suggest something mechanical meaning fan motor faulty or blocked in some way or the compressor.

Without stripping out the fan etc and seeing what the score is there’s no way to know if that’s the problem.

K.

[Jason_K]

Thanks

Have plugged it in again after 4 hours plus+
No change… still beeping. Unable to reset using the temp control knob

[Jason_K]

It’s a built in unit so bit of a faff to get at back of it… any merit in taking it out and hoovering the back of it? Have read that in a few places.
It’s been in situ for over 5 years

[Jason_K]

Hmmm, now here’s a weird one. Working on the notion that the control knob wasn’t doing anything I removed the panel it’s on. On the back of the knob I could see a little ‘spindle’ which wasn’t moving when I turned the knob. I turned it to the reset position and the beeping stopped. I was then also able to press the ‘fast freeze’ button which hadn’t been responding previously.
Currently running without beeps and with Fast Freeze light on. Don’t actually think the freezer is doing anything, can’t hear if anything is running because the kitchen is so noisy, Christmas dinner will be on table shortly. Will leave for a few hours and see how it goes…. I expect a return of the grinding noise and warning beeps/light or more likely nothing at all

[kwatt]

If it was ice blocking the fan it’s possibly defrosted enough to let it work.

All you can do is wait and see.

K.

[Jason_K]

It ran for around 10 hours yesterday, freezing up again OK on ‘Fast Freeze’ without any mechanical noises, then the beeping started again… with a solid red light this time.
Took control panel off again and triggered the reset. Started up again without Fast Freeze and has now been OK for around 14 hours.
Definitely something not happy in there but seems to be working for now….

[Author]

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