Help with laptop - spilled drink

[zukes]

So, was watching the hockey game last night, having a rye and coke and playing OOTP on my work laptop. I reach for my drink, the glass is a little sweaty, it slips and I spill about a quarter of a high ball glass onto the keyboard.

I instanty turn it upside down, grab a cloth and my wife's hairdryer. After I am confident that everything has dripped out and I have dried everything, cold setting, I start to play my game again and everything is working. Tried all of the keys, everything works.

I get up this morning and it's like it is stuck in sleep mode, it tries to come on but wont. I have had it off for the last 30 minutes and I will attempt to turn it on when I get to work.

If it does not work any suggestions? This laptop is only 4 months old, I have been at my job for 9 months and already had a laptop die on me, through no fault of my own in the first case, but this could be my 3rd if I need a new one.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by zukes

So, was watching the hockey game last night, having a rye and coke and playing OOTP on my work laptop. I reach for my drink, the glass is a little sweaty, it slips and I spill about a quarter of a high ball glass onto the keyboard.

I instanty turn it upside down, grab a cloth and my wife's hairdryer. After I am confident that everything has dripped out and I have dried everything, cold setting, I start to play my game again and everything is working. Tried all of the keys, everything works.

I get up this morning and it's like it is stuck in sleep mode, it tries to come on but wont. I have had it off for the last 30 minutes and I will attempt to turn it on when I get to work.

If it does not work any suggestions? This laptop is only 4 months old, I have been at my job for 9 months and already had a laptop die on me, through no fault of my own in the first case, but this could be my 3rd if I need a new one.

There is no way I would turn on a laptop/phone/etc after such a short time after being wet. Even if you are sure it is dry, it probably isnt. I know this wont help for now, but next time pull the battery immediately and wait a while and/or stick it in a bag of rice to extract moisture.

[zukes]

I have done the rice thing before for a phone and it worked awesome.

My problem was, I left the laptop on while doing all of this (and plugged in, and I only had that drink and one before it, wow) and then once I had shaken it, it had stopped dripping and I had run the hair dryer on it for a long time (another mistake according to the interwebs) it was working fine.

I tried all of the keys and it seemed fine. So like I do every night, I just left it on sleep mode. Dumb.

[Mad Mel]

zuker, didja try shutting 'er down, yank the battery out for a bit, then put it back in and fire it up? Check to see if the battery contacts got gummed up. Ya big drunk.

[zukes]

Mel, I popped everything I could out this morning. The laptop tries to turn on, it reads that there is power, the light turns on, but stalls. The monitor never even turns on (I did not spill on the monitor), it is like it is tries to turn on and goes to sleep mode. Then it turns itself off and tries again, perpetually doing the same thing until I physically turn it off.

Luckily, my boss just laughed at me and grabbed me an unused (dinosaur comparitively) laptop. Looks like I am going to lose everything I had on the old one, unless when I reassemble it later it miraculously works.

[psyang]

If it's a work laptop, then work should take care of the repair. They should also be able to salvage all of your data on the hard drive (unless the hard drive crashed badly while you were shaking it dry - never shake a running laptop unless it uses SSDs).

The rice trick works well with water, but with something sticky like a rum and coke, you really need to wash it off, then let it dry completely before applying power.

[zukes]

Originally Posted by psyang

If it's a work laptop, then work should take care of the repair. They should also be able to salvage all of your data on the hard drive (unless the hard drive crashed badly while you were shaking it dry - never shake a running laptop unless it uses SSDs).

The rice trick works well with water, but with something sticky like a rum and coke, you really need to wash it off, then let it dry completely before applying power.

Yeah work will take care of it, just a pain since I already had one laptop die on me. I didn't really shake it, more just tilted it a few ways to get the liquid out.

I have the keyboard out and the battery, DVD drive, memory etc. There has been very little evidence of the spill, so I may luck out after all.

[Mad Mel]

I'm wondering if there's some pop-induced electrical crossover happening on a circuit board. How you go about cleaning that up is beyond me, but maybe worth a trip to a computer repair place.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by Mad Mel

I'm wondering if there's some pop-induced electrical crossover happening on a circuit board. How you go about cleaning that up is beyond me, but maybe worth a trip to a computer repair place.

That's probably what happened. There is liquid trapped somewhere and it is shorting out traces.

[zukes]

An update, I was curious as to why I was still using a replacement laptop, rather than getting a new one, well Friday morning my old laptop was on my desk, fixed.

Now the debate, use work computer again for OOTP 12, or leave it on the dinosaur home laptop?