I had a travel mug of coffee with the sippy-top with a small hole. It was next to my laptop, and the dog came by and tipped over the cup. Some coffee dribbled into the keyboard. I immediately wiped up what I could, then tipped the laptop sideways and got out some more. The laptop continued working fine for about 20 minutes. Then it suddenly shut itself off.
My question is… What’s the usual prognosis for these things? If I leave it alone, will it just dry out in a couple of days? Is there something I should be doing in the meantime to help it dry out? Or is my laptop totally ruined? :smack: :smack:
My cat helped me with the same dilema a few months ago. I did not tip it to one side, but I did suck out as much as I could with my mini-vac. I powered it up a couples hours later and it was completely fine and has remained so.
Since I first posted, I’ve Googled around, and the first thing you’re supposed to do when you spill liquid into anything electronic is to turn it off and unplug it. This I did not do.
It’s owned by my employer, so when I go in on Monday I’ll have them look at it. (I was working at home today, hence the dog.) One of the Google links said the hard drive is rarely affected, and that’s where all my work resides, so I’m trying to be optimistic!
Well, whatever else happens, it’s certainly true that you’re very unlikely to lose the data on your hard-drive.
My partner had a laptop spill a couple of years ago, and it kept working fine for another year. Then it died, but it was four years old and had been through some tough times, so it’s hard to know whether the coffee spill had much of an effect.
I guess it all depends on exactly where in the computer the liquid flows.
Your laptop may be dead. The motherboard (everything else connects to this) lies directly under the keyboard, and it sounds like you shorted something out. It is repairable, but it likely won’t be cheap, especially if they have to replace the whole motherboard.
If it was just water instead of coffee, and if you had immediately turned it off and let it dry thoroughly (a day in a warm spot after extracting as much water as possible), then it probably would have been ok. Tipping the laptop to the side may have made things worse, as this would have caused liquid to spill off the tray that holds the keys in place.
A few years ago I accidentally knocked a half-full can of Pepsi into Phatlewt’s laptop. After I got done freaking out, we set it on it’s side on some papertowels, drives downward, and left it. It booted on the third day and worked fine after that.
Did the coffee have sugar in it? If not then it could dry with no problems, however if it had sugar then there could be some sticky residue left behind that could cause additional problems (not to mention sticky keys).
I forgot to add, it was a Sony Vaio. He was nice not to make a big deal over it. We blotted it off as best we could and didn’t notice any trouble with the keys.
I spilled a Crown and Coke into my Dell laptop once. Called them up, they had someone at my house within hours, I pulled the hard drive and gave it too them. A few days later it came back, good as new (with a BIOS upgrade!).
Call the manu. and see what they’ll do. If nothing, I’d pull out everything I could (battery, CD , hard drive) and leave it open and put a fan on it. Give it a day or so.
I removed the battery, it was dry. I opened the laptop and put it upside-down over the edge of the table (with a chair right next to it so it won’t fall off).
The logic board is likely dead. Your harddrive is safe. If it happens again, flip it quickly upside-down, turn if off, remove the keyboard if you know how, and let it air dry for 24 hours.
Don’t try to claim warranty, it’s pretty easy to see the coffee stains.
Sorry, nothing helpful or optimistic from me really. I spilled water in my laptop a few weeks ago and it completely stopped working. I called HP and they came and picked it up for service. Then I got a call back saying that the warranty doesn’t cover water damage. Then they gave me a quote of $2600 (NZD) to replace the motherboard, CPU, memory, and keyboard. Guess I’ll be looking to buy a new laptop instead once I win the lottery. At least my hard drive is ok.
My roommates cat pissed into my laptop in the beginning of the summer, I got a copy of the tech manual.
Right when I discovered the problem, I turned the machine over on a towel to drip it out, then pulled out the battery and unplugged it. It took about a week or so to get the manual, so it was thoroughly dry. I got pure isopropyl alcohol swabs and plain make up remover cotton pads and a bottle of isoprop. Following the disassembly instructions, mrAru and I took it apart totally and cleaned every single bit of the damned thing to remove the cat whiz.
It works fine, nothing fried because it was turned off at the time, you will probably not be lucky in that respect. The only damage I still have is 4 varying sized round areas where the spray actually nailed the lcd screen, the placement is mostly ok for things I can size the screen to avoid like casual serfing or email, and duo boxing into EQ [i shrink to /viewport 50 50 500 300 normally, and arrange my UI arround the blanked out areas. I use a custom UI based on Mafoos and TinyIcon]
I took this action because I have been out of work since jan 03, and we have enough income to pay expenses but not to repair or replace the computer=\ as a new screen is literally 1200, and I paid 1400 for the thing new…
I spilled beer in mine. No I was not drunk … well, not much. The beer was sitting next to the laptop, cat ran across the desk the beer started to topple and I grabbed it overcompensating and a little sloshed out on the keyboard. It immediately got goofy (computers can’t hold their liquor apparently). I shut it off and wiped up as best as I could and left it to dry. Tried it the next day and it booted up but the keys were all wonky, some worked, some didn’t, some repeated, some typed the wrong character. I then turned it off again and removed the keyboard. I did this once to add memory so I figured I had nothing to lose. I used q-tips and tried to clean up inside as best I could and I cleaned the keys better. Some of the keys were still a little wonky but not as bad. I took to using a separate keyboard and mouse for a while but eventually it was okay again.
If the notebook is not too old, and is a reasonably popular model, you can often “part out” (ie dis-assemble) the notebook into sub-components, and recover a reasonable chunk of it’s cost from the screen, hard drive, battery, memory and other components. The chassis and bezel has some value as well. Researching eBay sales will give you a good guide to appropriate pricing.
You can also sell it (complete) as a non-functioning unit and still get some good money for it as the screen and battery are among the most expensive pieces and are usually unaffected by moisture on the keyboard. Make sure you state how it was damaged, and that this is not an impact damage issue.
Update – good news for anyone out there who might have the same problem in the future… The laptop is in tip-top perfect shape! And all the keys work properly, too!
The lesson I have learned (beyond being more careful about the dog and liquids near the machine):
*** Along with cleaning up the liquid, I should have immediately unplugged the laptop and removed the battery, even if it seemed to still be working right after the incident. It might not short out immediately, but spring a sneak attack on you while there’s still some residual moisture inside. ***
Rather than start a new thread (since it’s not all that urgent), I’ll just peg this on here:
Can anyone give me advice about getting sticky residue off a computer keyboard? Someone seems to have spilled a sugary drink (no one will fess up, so we don’t know what it was) on my mother’s laptop a while ago, and despite several attempts to clean things up using alcohol swabs, things are still really sticky–the keys work, but it’s a serious pain in the ass to use any key further to the left than the d. Figured I’d try to help her out by seeing if any of y’all had an answer.
