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So my dearest loving wife spilled tea on our HP pavilion laptop keyboard last night. As the story goes, the computer died instantly so she unplugged it and wiped all visible moisture off. When I was told of the incident ten minutes later I immediately began disassembling covers and air Drying the internals. There was no moisture in the area of the hard drive or memory as far as I can tell. I am thinking that as quickly as it died, the power supply may have have shorted?

Whatever the case, it's still dead. The only sign of life is a small led that lights when the external power is plugged in. I know its a long shot, but Is there any chance of a simple fix for this, fuse somewhere or some failsafe?

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92 Miata 1.9L naturally aspirated. SSM 21

Possible, but your best chance of a fix is to google the model name and "spilled" or something similar and see what others may have posted about it. And it sounds crazy, but looking at eBay using the model may turn up commonly broken parts that are user replaceable, too. You see that with *some* electronics, anyway. With laptops it's usually just screens, but sometimes other parts. The other idea is to possibly buy a matching model off eBay with a busted screen and turn two into one.


--Donnie

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I've heard of people putting cell phone into a baggie w/ rice to pick up the moisture. Could you do the same trick w/ a larger garment bag?

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Rodney

'08 Bullitt mustang, CAM 7
Autox VP '09-'10, President '11-'12, interim President 2nd half of ‘14
proud recipient of the Bowie Grey service award '12
Now just a guy driving a mustang....

I would think that it's toast. If you're lucky, you can most likely grab any data off of it by pulling the hard drive and browsing through the files on another computer.

As someone who was a computer janitor for a while, I'm really glad that business laptops have drainage built into the keyboard. I've tested it before (not on purpose) and it works really well.

I have not dealt with something as large as a laptop, but I have had good luck (phones and gaming devices) with both embedding in bags of rice, or heating an oven to a very low temp (150 degrees or so), turning off oven and then putting the component in the oven to let it soak for a few hours. You have to be careful with the oven method as too hot can result in melted plastic (as you would expect). Usually when I do the oven method, I have disassembled something as thoroughly as I can. Stuff like screens, cases, etc. don't go in the oven. Regardless... right now, rice is my preferred method as it seems to be much safer than the oven method. Neither works 100% of the time. Sometimes I try rice first and if that doesn't work it might spend some in the oven (nothing much to loose at that point). If the spill was something like a sugary soda, I rinse the disassembled parts in clean water prior to trying to extract moisture.

Good luck and I suspect the purchase of broken components from eBay to create a Frankenstein is likely work the best.

Richard

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Richard Casto
1972 Porsche 914
2013 Honda Fit Sport
2015 Honda Fit EX
http://motorsport.zyyz.com
Money can't buy happiness, but somehow it's more comfortable to cry in a Porsche than a Kia.

Was there sugar or ? in the tea? Might make a difference in what's possible.

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Dick Rasmussen

FS 50 2018 Mustang GT

Great suggestions. After more drying the status is unchanged. I checked eBay and I could buy another laptop like mine and swap parts, but I can get a comparable new one for a couple of hundred more. I think I'll go this route since I don't know the extent of the damage. since the hard drive did not get wet I think it's ok. I found that I can get a hard drive adapter for less than 5 bucks on eBay so I can remove the drive from the old computer, connect it to the new computer and transfer my files. Anyone had success doing this?

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92 Miata 1.9L naturally aspirated. SSM 21

Not sure about sugar, but she did add milk. I read that residue from either can cause circuits to short.

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92 Miata 1.9L naturally aspirated. SSM 21

The rice and drying tricks only work if you get the device shut down before short circuits happen. Sounds like in this case something shorted out and the thing died nearly immediately. Drying that out won't "fix" it.

And yes, as long as the hard drive wasn't hurt in any way, jerking it out and using an adapter should get you your files back pretty easily.


--Donnie

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My Blog