Force defrost on board GE Fridge?
 

How do you force a manual defrost on a fridge with a control board. I have a GE GSS22JFMC side by side. No owners manual.

As far as I know there is no way to do it.

What is the original problem with your fridge?

Gene.

The original problem was the coil in the freezer iced up. I wanted to put it in to defrost so I could check the heater and the defrost thermostat.

You can check the defrost heater and the defrost thermostat for continuity. Both of them should be closed (the defrost thermostat must be cold at the test time).

Gene.

You can manually force defrost. Remove the back metal panel to expose the motherboard and unplug the power plug on the bottom left. Stick a jumper between the J11 and J 8 connector pins. The pc board will have these pins labeled. Now plug in fridg. The defrost heater will now draw current, if yes, you probably have a bad motherboard item # 801. They also recommend to also replace the freezer thermister. If not, you have a bad defrost heater or thermostat. Very common for the heater to fail on these.