Inspiron 1525 with water damage

Hi

i've been given a Dell Inspiron 1525 with water damage to repair.

it doesn't look like a lot of water has gone into it, there's some marks on the metal parts of the internal frame and a little bit of rust marks on the top of the dvd writer drive. There was some corrosion/rust on a couple of the chips which i have cleaned and scrubbed off.

When it's plugged in, the blue battery led comes on, when left on both the power light and the battery light come on aswell as the light under the power button, But it doesn't boot and the fan doesn't start.

at one point the fan did spin but only for about 3-4 seconds and went back off.

any suggestions?

thanks

 

Bottom line is if the power was on and something shorted then it could be anything. If you shut the machine down straight away and you let it dry (if just water - needs more cleaning if it had sugar etc in it) before trying to power up again you canusually get away with it. Unfortunately a lot of peoples instinct to to try and power it up to see if it still works.

Sounds like somethings shorted on the board and without knowing what steps the owner followed after the spill it's impossible to say. Does the harddrive spin up? Also the fact that you are seeing rust spots would lend me to believe the spill isn't that recent.

 

yeh i know it's not recent it's been about a week or two i'd say, and while it does look as though most of the water was drained out of it by the owner, i think it's safe to assume that he did try to power it up too soon.

i didn't have the hdd in when it powered up, i'll try again with the hdd in.

can't even get the lights to come on now.

any idea how much would a new motherboard cost?

 

I was gonna suggest booting without the hard drive to see if it would at least post to rule it out. Don't expect a new motherboard to be cheap.

Like I say - you'll get away with it a lot of the time, a non-vital short will shut the system down (or a quick manual shutdown), you'll dry it out and that'll be it. But if you are unlucky and the initial short hits something major or you try and power the machine back on while still not completely dry and short something major you can blow anything. You could maybe try a different power supply just in case the original took a hit but if something managed to short the PSU I'd be very surprised if that didn't result in something more substantial getting fried.

You could just try stripping the entire machine down, cleaning it and all the sockets, letting it all dry and reassembling it and see if it works (corrosion in a socket could cause a bad connection and a failure to post but I think it's unlikely). That's a lot of time and effort though. Sounds like the owner probably resigned themselves to it being fecked, left it for a few weeks and then given it you to look at as a last resort.

 

thanks for your help

what would you recommend i use to clean it?

i've got some isopropyl alcohol which i've read is good for cleaning computers parts, i've also got some wd-40, dunno if that'd be any use for the computer though...

 

Dont touch anything with WD-40 It leaves a coating my design.

Isopropyl alcohol and some Q-tips will do fine - maybe buy some Switch Cleaner for the ports (and memory slots). If you do go this route give it a thorough inpection as it maybe easier to spot a burn as you remove it piece by piece.

 

right, strange thing happening now.

i've cleaned it with the isopropyl, i re-connected everything and put the battery in, when i plugged the power supply in it powered up, the fan and hard drive were both spinning, the screen stayed off though.

i tried connecting it to an external monitor but it didn't come on, i turned the laptop off and couldn't get it to come back on again. So i took the battery out and left it for an hour, put the battery back in and power supply and same thing again, powers up, everything spinning and moving but no display and when i turn it off it won't come back on.

can't work this one out!

 

CLEAN IT better disasemble EVERything let it dry 24 HOURS then fire it back on and rush it into the bios and see what componets work. Iam guessing hte gpu and the gpu work and the ram work because you get no beeps at start up.

 

Getting no beep at start-up and therefore no POST is just a result of something in the system not reporting back a "good" signal and allowing the boot to move on. Again, it could be anything. Ideally in a desktop you would remove all the hardware you could just down to CPU, Vid card and RAM and see if it would post - obviously not as easy on a laptop.
The main thing I would rule out would be corrosion in the RAM slots - spray the tags on the RAM with switch cleaner and plug and unplug a few times to clean the slot. Beyond that would mean substituting hardware but again is more problematic in a laptop. Any spare RAM lying around? Could also try with just a single stick individually. Then the only hardware left to really test is the CPU but I doubt you have an alternative and I doubt that would be the culprit.
Unfortunately it sounds like a motherboard replacement would be the only way forward (providing the PSU is working within specs).

I take it you see no evidence of any burning? Especially around the power and CPU area's of the mainboard?

 

update, i'm getting even more frustrated by it now haha

right, i took it apart and cleaned every part that i saw a mark on with the alcohol, it was spotless. I put it back together and plugged it in and the three leds (caps lock, num lock, scroll lock) started flashing in sequence, i pressed the power button and it came on, gave a message saying something about the bios settings, at this point i didn't have the hard drive in so i turned it off, put the hard drive in and it wouldn't come back on.

It came on again once after this but the screen stayed off this time, since then it's been dead again, i'm gonna take it apart again and clean everywhere even more thoroughly and try again. It's getting annoying because i know it works now but i can't get it to come on.

i think the battery's faulty because each time now when it's come to life and i've turned it off and inserted the battery it wouldn't come back on, i think it may be the battery that's causing it to not come back to life each time.

 

take the cpu out and clean it. Apply new thermal paste and see if she works. Clean the area where all the lcd cables plug in, better yet clean the cables.

 

right i did it again, took it all apart, cleaned everything and started it up, it powered up again, the dell logo came on the screen etc.

then it just said "time-of-day clock stopped" and stayed like that, i turned it off and it won't power on again just like last time.

why is it powering once but not again?

plus, will the time-of-day clock thing be fixed by replacing the cmos battery?