How I finally solved the Airwell symbol mystery — steps that actually worked

I had this exact issue with my older Mitsubishi unit. The little yellow snowflake icon would just sit there even after I cycled thru every mode from heating to fan. It was driving me nuts because I knew the machine was cooling just fine and it felt like a permanent hardware error.

I tried the power cycle thing you mentioned. I cut the breaker to the outdoor compressor and let it sit for a good ten minutes. When I flipped the breaker back on and the unit rebooted, the icon vanished immediatly. It felt like a magic fix, but the thing is, it only worked for maybe three days before the little symbol started flashing again.

It seems like that unit has a memory bug tied to the outdoor unit's pressure readings, which is a common fault with that older series. When the compressor strains a bit, the unit holds onto that 'warning' state until it gets a full power reset again. If you're on that specific model, you might just be dealing with a faulty capacitor that needs replacing. It's frustrating because the fix is so easy but the underlying problem isn't. Anyway, for now, I'm just planning to keep resetting the power to the indoor unit every few days to keep the remote looking clean. Just figured I’d share since it was a total pain for me.

One thing I learned chasing a similar ghost icon on my own remote is that the symbol on the handset and the light on the indoor unit are two seprate things, and only one of them matters. The remote icon is often just an LCD segment showing the selected mode, so if it lingers after you change modes, the remote itself may be the problem, not the unit. I swapped in fresh batteries and gave the battery contacts a quick clean with a pencil eraser and the stuck segment cleared up. Cheap to try before you go anywhere near a breaker, and I'd check the indoor unit's own display for a blinking pattern too, since that's where a real fault code would show.

Been fixing these since the days the only 'display' was a little flag popping up on the louvre, so I tend to side with the guy who blamed the handset. Half the ghost icons I've seen came down to worn buttons on the remote itself. The rubber pads under the mode key go soft after a few years and a button can register twice or stick down. Pop the batteries out, press every key a few times to discharge anything sitting on the board, wipe the contacts with a dry cloth, and put fresh batteries in. Costs nothing and takes ten minutes, which beats crawling to a breaker every few days.