[DickR]

This sort of thing has come up before. You can google it here and on other sites. Since you've already emptied the 'fridge, the next thing to do is either:

1. If you turned it off this am, look inside the bottom of the freezer side for any collection of melted frost. If you find this, it means one or perhaps two things. One is that there was a lot of frost built up on the evaporator coil, which would be hidden behind a metal or plastic panel. The other thing is, if the melt water came out to collect on the inside of the compartment, then the drain tube from the meltwater collection pan under the evaporator coil is clogged. If you don't see any meltwater in the bottom, then it likely drained properly to a pan under the refrigerator, from where the warm air blowing off the condenser coil evaporates it back into the room. If the unit has been off all day, likely any frost buildup on the evaporator coil has melted away and drained to the pan below. If this is the case, turn the unit back on, without anything in it. After 20-30 minutes, you should be able to tell if the freezer side is getting cold, then the compressor likely is not at fault. If it is getting cold, your unit may be ok without doing anything more. See explanation below.

2. If you have kept the unit "running" (whatever result that may be producing), turn it off. Look first for any evidence of big frost buildup on the evaporator coil, which would show as a roughly circular blob of visible frost on the panel covering the evaporator coil. This would a good sign, as it tells you that the refrigeration loop, compressor and all, is working just fine, and you have a defrost issue. Remove the racks, light bulb, and whatever screws you have to remove to get the cover off the evaporator coil. This ought to be on the bottom half of the freezer side, at the back. Be very careful not to cut yourself on the aluminum fins on the coil assembly, as they are razor sharp. If you see a good part of the coil assembly iced up, again this a good sign. A buildup of ice indicates the defrost cycle has not been taking care of the frost issue, and it keeps getting worse until the air circulation past the coil is blocked nearly completely, and you get the result you have.

If there was no frost on the coil, and running it for a while indicates no refrigeration (which you could tell by a thin film of frost forming on the coil), then you do indeed have a refrigeration malfunction, which could be the compressor or a loss of refrigerant.

If there was frost on the coil, then the machinery is ok, but the defrost timer or defrost heating element may be faulty, which is not a terribly costly fix, other than for the guy's labor.

There is another explanation, however, overloading of the defrost cycle. In one scenario, if the fridge or freezer door was left ajar, humid air from the room could overwhelm the evaporator coil and clog it with so much frost that the defrost cycle couldn't handle it. Enough cycles (two or three per day) and the coil could become plugged with ice, and only a manual defrost will cure the problem.

Another scenario (this has happened to us) is that the panel covering the coil is aluminum, and one of the shelves of food got overloaded, pressing something large and frozen up against the panel, which gets pushed in against the coil. In the defrost cycle, the brief time that the defrost heater is turned on is no longer enough. The heat is largely absorbed by the chunk of beef or whatever is pressed up against the coil. Again, enough cycles of failing to get rid of all the frost each time can lead to more and more plugging of the coil with ice until the air circulation is largely cut off.

If you found ice on the evaporator coil or you find that the coil can get cold enough to form frost, after you've done a manual defrost (use a hair dryer to speed things up) and turned the unit back on, then you can just let the whole thing cool down, reload it with food, and after a week or so look again at the evaporator coil. If the defrost cycle is working, there should be just minimal frost buildup on it, the result of just a few hours of operation since the last cycle. If the problem seems to have gone away, just be careful about stuff that blocks the doors from closing and about piling too much heavy stuff on the back edge of freezer side shelves.

Or, if you're unlucky, the unit has indeed conked out and you're out some cash. But that happens, too.