Diagnosing a problem - water spillage

I spilt some drink on the keyboard of my HP nx8220. It landed on the top right of the keyboard. HP have quoted £450 to fix it, without really knowing what was wrong with it. We are reluctant to claim on the house insurance as this is actually a new laptop that I had had a week (spilt drink on the previous one and claimed on that!).

So, we are trying to work out what is wrong with it.

I am actually using it at the moment for the first time in a week. Up until now we have been able to switch it on and on occasions boot it up into windows before it switches itself off (the majority of times though it won't go past the HP screen). My hubby ran a check on the hard drive in an external device and it came up with no errors. This morning we got it into windows and used it for about 10 mins before it cut out and switched off. So far this evening I've been using it for about 15 mins and it is still going.

What we need to know is what could cause it to cut out. We are quite happy to replace bits but don't have the money to buy new parts if it turns out that they aren't the problem ones! Any ideas would be much appreciated.

(Oh, we know the DVD drive is shot as the laptop won't even boot up with it in, so we will have to replace that.)

 

How much did you spill? I would remove as many parts as you could from your laptop. Just incase any water is still in there or if parts are still wet they will be able to air out. Hopefully someone with alittle more expireience will help.
Tim

 

It is recommended to turn off the computer and let it dry immediately after a spil, to avoid any short circuiting or other possible damage.
Did the machine switch itself off immediately after spilling? If you can switch it on and run windows then chances are the hardware damage isn't significant. It is still safer to remove the keyboard and clean off the mineral residue left by the water, as that could cause future problems (not only hard ware wise, but also warranty wise. Any manufacturer that discovers water damage would automatically refuse to repair the machine regardless of the actual problem).

 

stop drinking near your computer

 

agreed!!!

 

Yeah. That's a given now

This problem happened over a week ago and we did take it apart completely to dry out.

We did wonder if there might be a problem with the memory and it was failing when it tried to access a certain part of it.

(Second attempt at this as it crashed last time)

 

If you think it's a memory problem, HP laptops have a built-in memory test in their BIOS. I can't remember offhand where in the bios to find it, but if you poke around a bit, you should be able to find it. Or download something like MemTestx86

 

I've been drinking by computers since I started using them over a decade ago (close to a decade and a half) never had a spill but I know plenty of people who have. This is where accidental damage coverage comes in handy (such as dell's)
As soon as a spill has occured power down the machine and start cleaning up/letting dry as the others have said.

memtest or rightmark memory analyzer should be run to check the memory.

 

Look into the Latitudes if you have a tendency to spill your drinks.

 

or waterproof laptops. like this one

 

Suggestion: disconnect the little keyboard flatcable and attach a USB keyboard. See if it boots.