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Spilled coffee on laptop

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Panthata

PCHF Member
Feb 24, 2022
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#1
Took it in for repair and was told it can't be repaired because the Motherboard is damaged.

This has happened before and I get told the same thing, howvever, googling it shows that it is often possible to clean out the components. They took out the HD but it leaves me wondering why the HD would be working but the other components are too damaged for repair. I don't think it was encased, it's just an SD HD.

Is there a possibility the people I bring it to just don't want to clean it out? Like it's too much effort or something. I just compare it to what I read online and see people having success but no one has told me for past instances that it can be repaired and they always say in advance that it can't be repaired due to the motherboard. I have heard from people who work in IT that saying the motherboard is broken is a way to avoid the issue.

I also asked if it can be resold and they said no because it's too broken. I mean, someone must be able to make use of this outside being a paper weight?
 
#2
Hello

Yes 9 times out of 10 , when a liquid is spilled on any electronics while powered up it will short the circuits in the mobo. yes the hdd may survive this. You can try this , let the laptop completely dry out and no power source should be connected to the laptop at this time.. I would place the laptop upside down and leave it for a week and maybe a fan blowing on it.. Then try to power on the laptop and see what happens.
 
#3
If you have decided it is dead and want to try yourself.
WARNING This may or may not work.
ONLY do this if you want to experiment.
1) Remove the drive
2) Remove the ram
3) Remove the CMOS battery
4) Remove the mb from the case.

Get some warm soapy water and a SOFT toothbrush.
Brush around the part that has the coffee - it should be obvious. DO NOT SCRUB. gentle gentle gentle.
Rinse the soapy water off.
Use a hair dryer to dry the water off.
The dryer MUST be set to WARM - keep moving the dryer you do not want any parts to get to hot.
If no dryer sit it in the sun to dry - Better to borrow a dryer if you don't own one.
Reassemble.
Test.
Panthata said:
I don't think it was encased, it's just an SD HD
Click to expand...
The coffee might have missed this part.
Panthata said:
Took it in for repair and was told it can't be repaired because the Motherboard is damaged
Click to expand...
This can be true a couple of things come into play.
1) I am guessing the laptop was on at the time. = Helps create a short.
2) Do you have sugar with your coffee? = Helps create track damage.
3) Time.= The longer it is left the longer it has to sit and eat away/damage the tracks.

A Pc board is a bit easier than a laptop to do this.
 
#4
the hard drive is sort of enclosed with just a air intake hole which has an internal dust filter to semi-protect it, so water getting into the HDD is harder than one would think.
plus as Peter states, the spill may have gone no where near it.

and a SSD has no holes at all, and while they have no IP (ingress protection) rating, they would certainly survive for a short time if water was spilt over them.

yes, sometimes you find a repairer who either can't do a job (experience level) or won't do it (too busy).
in this case I'm pretty sure your laptop is cooked, so the motherboard (requiring the most effort and cost) would be a limiting factor - your money would be better spent going towards a new laptop.

Googling that others have fixed theirs simply means their liquid spill was completely different.

by the way - is this the same laptop you are having your language/region issues on and not getting read receipts?
 
#5
What do I need to copy the SD drive ... I have one for old hard drives not SD?

Bruce said:
the hard drive is sort of enclosed with just a air intake hole which has an internal dust filter to semi-protect it, so water getting into the HDD is harder than one would think.
plus as Peter states, the spill may have gone no where near it.

and a SSD has no holes at all, and while they have no IP (ingress protection) rating, they would certainly survive for a short time if water was spilt over them.

yes, sometimes you find a repairer who either can't do a job (experience level) or won't do it (too busy).
in this case I'm pretty sure your laptop is cooked, so the motherboard (requiring the most effort and cost) would be a limiting factor - your money would be better spent going towards a new laptop.

Googling that others have fixed theirs simply means their liquid spill was completely different.

by the way - is this the same laptop you are having your language/region issues on and not getting read receipts?
Click to expand...
yeah I got it anyway. Time was due.
 
#7
Bruce said:
so your two ongoing threads are with the same laptop?
other thread; https://pchelpforum.net/t/starter-problems-language-finding-items.86529/#post-175598

or is the coffee spilt laptop dead, and you got a new laptop that you are now having the language/read receipt issues with?
Click to expand...
The other threads is about problems with the new laptop which came installed with windows 11. Hence why I was asking about how some windows 11 features work because I'm having problems setting it up. The read receipt issue just popped up again because now I've lost access to the the actual outlook programme which let me see the read receipts. As far as I could tell previously the read receipts were only being forwarded to outlook and never mail. I thought this was how it was meant to work.

So this is thread is about repairing the previous broken laptop I spilled cofee on and is now non-functioning.

The other thread is about the new laptop with windows 11.
 
#8
phew - I'm with it now. :)

the spilt coffee PC is most likely dead - its drive could be put into any 2.5" SATA external enclosure which can then be plugged into another PC to copy its data off.
than that external drive could be a backup unit.
 
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