Laptop + Water = ????

[Shadowssong]

Hey guys and gals, roommate spilled water on his laptop (HP Compaq NC8430) earlier. I took it apart as much as I could (took out HD, ram, took off keyboard, removed DVD drive) I did find some water under the DVD drive, the harddrive was slightly wet, and there was some water on one of the memory sticks. Also underneath the keyboard there was a plastic sheath that covers the entire bottom, it had some water inside of it but I assume this is designed to hold the water and not leak it onto the critical components. I dried everything off and sprayed it with some compressed air.

Now with everything back assembled and the laptop does turn on, but no display. I tried hooking it up via VGA to my monitor and nothing. The fan does seem like it is spinning at 100% (not sure really, just much louder than normal).

What would be your prognosis? Is it shot? Any tricks up any of your sleeves?

Any help is appreciated!

 

[Kangg]

How long did you let it dry before you put it back together and turned it on? If you didn't let it dry for at least a day or two or longer you're likely shit out of luck. With a liquid spill like that the laptop needs to be totally disassembled, then dried out before you even think about putting it back together.

 

[Shadowssong]

Well he spilled it at work, and tried to reboot it immediately. I didn't get a crack at it until like 4 hours later and then it didn't get put back together and turn on for another 2 or 3 hours. So no I didn't let it dry, figured he had already tried to turn it on and no luck. Thanks though, I'll let him know its probably fried.

Oh and also I forgot to mention, the harddrive works fine, I hooked it up to my pc and was able to take the data off and put it on an external.

 

[Sathsayin]

I would say clean with alchohol on the parts with a q-tip then let stand for about 3 days. The thing is that the pcb is ver very pourous so it absorbes stuff an swells. If you let it dry and it wasn't on then I wouldve guesse it maybe woulve worked. I spilt a route 44 in my wifes school pc an immediatly jerked the battery out. I let it dry for about 3 days without dissasembling it and it worked apart from onscreen gpu corruption later. About 5 months after that it got rally flaky so we sold it for 100 bucks.

I would say go ahea and get a new one. If you disasseble it dried it out an ddidn't know to let it set long. I would say it would have eventually screwed up within a couple months anyway. if they spilt it in there and you didn't let it have enough time becasue you didn' t know it's not your fault anyway.

if data is an issue. you can reorder the same harddrive change pcboads if you know what you are doing then by a usb to ide/sata and rescue everything yourself.