A late Xmas present arrived yesterday - an iRiver 8G flash memory MP3 player. It looks really nice. I don’t know if it works as nice as it looks because one of the first things I did when I took it out of the box to examine it this morning was drop it in my (sweet creamered) coffee.
I immediately shook out what I could and swabbed as much as I could around the seams and buttons with rubbing alcohol. It’s on, but frozen on the menu page, and won’t turn off and won’t do a hard reset.
It’s hosed, isn’t it. Costco has a 90 day no-questions-asked returns and exchange policy on electronics, but I’d rather not wait another 3 weeks for a replacement to arrive if I can rescue this one satisfactorily. I did a search but didn’t find old threads here regarding phones and other electronics dropped into various liquids - something about a full alcohol submersion bath followed by a few days of drying in a bed of rice, or those silicon packets? Might that work, or should I even bother?
If it was out of warranty, I’d open the case (mine has little screws, not sure about yours, though), and rinse it off thoroughly with water, followed by a final rinse with distilled water or rubbing alcohol, then shake it as dry as I could, and give it a long drying time.
As long as opening the case doesn’t invalidate your no-questions-asked return, I’d still try this. If you have forced air heating, you could set it on a vent for a day or two to speed the drying.
Well, like an iPod the case is fitted together to be sleek and featureless with no screws and the battery can’t be removed. What I’ve done is the rubbing alcohol bath I asked about - dunk, swish, drain, and dunk again. Then dried with a towel. It’s sitting on the heat vent right now. There’s fog behind the screen at the moment. In a few hours I’ll stick it in a bag with a handful of those silicone pouch thingys for a couple of days and hope for the best.
Sigh. The headphones and usb cord never even made it out of the package; they’re still wrapped.