M17x r1 - Spilled coffee, fan spins & shuts off

So an almost whole cup of coffee with cream and sugar got spilled on the keyboard of my laptop this morning. I was able to shut it down holding the power button before all the coffee seeped down through the keyboard. I unplugged it and laid the laptop on its side (the coffee was spilled on the left side) to drain out the coffee and opened up the laptop to clean and dry it out. The keyboard was soaked and one of the speakers, but the rest was mostly dry. I did find the two fans a bit wet like a few drops of coffee made it through, but the hard drives where completely dry. The mother board had a few spots that where a bit sticky under the keyboard. I cleaned the laptop with alcohol and left it open for a while for it to dry out and put it back together.

I started up the laptop and the fan was running at high speed, but the screen didn't turn on. I shut it off after a few seconds by holding down the power button, waited a bit, then tried to turn it on again and it didn't turn on. I took it apart again to check that I hadn't forgotten to connect something or missed a spot. After reassembling it again and turning it on, the fan spun for a second or two then the laptop shut off. The screen never turned on and hitting the power button again did nothing.

Any ideas what might be fried?

 

probably the board. You should never have turned it on. If something like this happens, always go to your local PC repair shop and ask for ultrasonic cleaning, it would have been much cheaper than a new mainboard.

 

I have a R2 board for the M17x if you want to upgrade. Drop in replacement with just slight adjustment to the chassis. Then you can run 920XM or 940XM

 

Also need R2 daughter board, daughter board from R1 is not compatible

 

Thanks I could never find any details on the swap besides drop in. Further investigation: Need mobo, daughtboard, CPU heatsink and clip corner of the chassis.

https://www.imsolidstate.com/archives/1097
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/m14x-r1-to-r2-motherboard-swap-successful.758436/

 

Oops. Liquid could have gone absolutely anywhere. It loves to run along things into places you could not imagine. Including when you had it on its side. Inside connectors, under surface mounted components... If you want to try disassembling it completely and cleaning it again you should flush *underneath* everything the liquid touched with isopropyl and compressed air if you have it, and leave to dry for a full day in a big sack of rice or other dry environment. Coffee is at least a "good spill" to troubleshoot, it's easy to see where it went due to the residue.

Try disconnecting things from the mobo and seeing if the behaviour changes. Being an alienware iirc you should get beep error codes if you remove the display etc. That'll give an indication the mobo is in some way still alive

You may be really, really lucky and it's just a short in the keyboard or speakers or whatnot from liquid that's still in there