Hi everybody,

On the bottom of the back wall of the freezer there are a number of holes, slits, or other openings in the back wall panel. These slits are present so the evaporator fan can draw in cold air from the bottom of the freezer compartment, draw that air over the coils, and then push that chilled air into the refrigerator. If those back-wall vents are obstructed, the cold air will not circulate and the refrigerator will become warm. My vents were obstructed by objects placed in an unfortunate manner in the bottom of the freezer. Once I cleared the obstructions, refrigerator operation returned to normal.

Thank you to those of you who in the past have posted such detailed diagnostic information. That information led me to an understanding that the ability of the evaporator fan to circulate cold air is crucial to the refrigerator working correctly. The past posts concentrated on frost buildup being the cause of the obstruction and gave much helpful information on debugging which part(s) of the defrost system might have failed and caused frost buildup. When all parts of my machine's defrost system proved to be working OK, the next step was to look for other causes of failure of cold air to circulate. This led me to figure out that how the contents of the freezer were loaded into the freezer -- in particular how the contents of the bottom basket were loaded -- were the cause of my problem.

Thanks to you all!