Dell XPS m1530 wont boot after beer spillage on keyboard

Hi all, posting this here to get some advice on this problem,

a friend has the laptop above and on Xmas eve his niece spilt some Budweiser on the keyboard of the laptop, the laptop was powered off at the time but plugged in, he dried up as much of the spillage as he could and put the laptop into his hot press for around 48hrs,

he went to power it on yesterday and all he's getting is the initial fan and HDD spin up then it goes quiet, nothing comes up on the screen it stays blank on power up, he can press the media buttons on the top panel and they light up etc, he can also do a hard power off and press power on again and the same as above HDD and fan spin up then quietness,

does this mean that he needs a new motherboard etc and would the cpu and ram be shagged also?

Thanks

 

Anyone any advice, whats it even worth?

 

You can try the diagnostics. Try holding Fn + D on boot up and see what the 3 lights next to the power buttons do.

 

Hi DFI Fan, thanks for your reply, i just did that diagnostic there and i'm getting the first light flashing continous and the 2nd and 3rd are on solid,

what code error does that stand for?

Thank you

 

Just found there that those error codes state it could be a cpu or processor failure.

if the cpu went bad after the spillage could the mobo still be ok and if both crapped out would it still throw up the error for cpu failure?

 

Yea, actually most likely it is the motherboard or GPU. Very unlikely that it is the CPU. It is actually quite common on the XPS M1530 for the GPU to fail as the 8600M GTs were part of a class action law suit against Nvidia, but since you spilled bear on it you might have fried the mobo and/or GPU that is soldered onto it.

 

Did you try drying it out first? In some cases taking the whole thing apart and putting it in an airing cupboard for a few days to really dry it out might help, though beer is sticky when it drys, and I would assume once the components get a bit warm, you smell like a brewery on a hot summer day.

 

Beer will leave a residue when it dries that may still conduct.

If you are at the point of nothing left to lose, consider removing the KEYBOARD and soaking it in warm water for a couple hours, then rinsing it extensively under gently running warm water. Let it dry in a very warm place until you are positive it's completely dry, perhaps for days.

If this doesn't help, repeat the process for the motherboard.

 

Maybe it's still hungover??

Sorry, couldn't resist.....