Post-beer spill salvage! - a new computer, and selling the old (parts)

The situation is that my three year old daughter knocked over a glass of beer onto my Samsung NP-QX410 laptop. Some keys stopped working, then the entire keyboard died, although it seems some keys work some of the time. The computer itself seems fine other than keyboard-related issues (it will randomly type "fffff" indefinitely until I press Delete). I can't find any information on changing the keyboard out, and at this point I'm wondering if the computer was more damaged than just the keyboard (sometimes when I open the Documents folder, it flickers back and forth between folders; I'm thinking this is related to keyboard malfunction, but am not sure).

To compound all that, I've opened up the back of the computer and can't for the life of me figure out how to change out the keyboard. I've changed keyboards before on a Dell and HP, but the "island-style" keyboard is underneath the motherboard, the fan, and other stuff. Thinking it was only accessible through the top, like most laptops, I tried prying off the aluminum and damaged it - it turns out it doesn't snap off but is glued on, so now the entire top edge of the aluminum between the keyboard and bar is bent up.

So I'm looking into a new computer!

I'm a teacher at a private school which is just about to return to session, so I need to resolve this as quickly and as cheaply as possible. My wife has a laptop, and I have an older HP that I'm typing on that could hold me over for a bit, but my preference would be to replace my old laptop. As I wrote here, I really like the aluminum casing, need a biggish hard-drive because of a ton of music files, and would prefer just to port over everything into a new computer.

So I'm thinking of either a replacement NP-QX410 or something similar, maybe an HP dm4. Which brings me to this thread and forum: I'm hoping to do a few things that require hardware. So a couple questions (for now):

1) Are there potential problems with simply swapping my old hard-drive into a new laptop? I assume this would be pretty straightforward if I got another NP-QX410 (or even a QX411, but I don't see a reason to go that route considering one of the perks of the newer model is a bigger hard-drive). Would my old hard-drive be compatible with a different brand, like the HP dm4?

2) Considering that only the keyboard and possibly the motherboard are damaged on the old computer, I'd like to make back some of the lost money by selling off parts. What can I sell for some value? I'm thinking:
- the screen probably has the highest value
- the new hard-drive, assuming I can easily swap in the old one
- the CPU?
- the fan?
- what else?

I'm thinking that if I buy a QX410 on ebay or refurbished, I can get it for around $550. How much can i expect to make back from the above items? I'm thinking the screen and hard-drive alone might be able to get me $150-200.

3) If I go the Samsung route, I can either buy a new QX411 for $750 or a lightly used or refurbished QX410 for $550 or so. Given that money is tight, I'd prefer the latter option, but also don't want to deal with hassles. Am I better off just financing the newer model? It seems like a bit of waste considering I'd just be swapping in the older, smaller hard-drive.

Any other thoughts or recommendations on this issue? If you've read this far, I really appreciate your time and help!

 

A couple other thoughts.

First off, I did hook up an external keyboard to the damaged computer and it works fine. However, the old keyboard is still causing malfunctions ("fffff" and occasional flickering of folders). I tried figuring out how to even un-hook the keyboard internally, but don't know which ribbon belongs to it. I couldn't find a service manual online.

Finally, here's the moral of the story: next time, I'm getting a protective covering for the keyboard!

 

If you spilled beer on it then its probably closing the circuit where the buttons operate. SO it would be the same as all of the buttons being pressed at the same time.


Your F button is probably only slightly effected wich is why it would be putting alot of F's on your screen.

If you can take it out you can probably fix it. Ive done this with my laptop.

Take your keyboard out and put it in a bowl full of alcohal (Nothing bad would happen unless it has power running through it)

Leave it in a the bowl for about 2 - 3 days then take it out and put it in a closed bag full of silica jell.

When i did this all of my buttons with the exception of my down button right button and delete button began to work again.




EDIT: I do HVAC work so i use r410a refridgerant instead of alcohal. Alcohal should work to, use anything that can evaporate fast (refridgerants are the best).

 

Anyway, did you learn anything?

 

Always chug your beer all at once like a man, never sip over time.

Alternative since you have a 3 year old around if you insist in sipping your beer then just keep it in one of these since I know you have to have a few spare laying about. Just be sure she knows its your cup.

 

A Toughbook perhaps?

On a more serious side, Thinkpads do and as far as I remember some Elitebooks should also have drains so the liquid flow thru the keyboard and do not damage rest of the laptop. They aren't that bad laptops either for work They also have repair manuals available online, so there wouldn't be that much problem to open them if necessary.

 

All I can say is that if you were prying something up that was glued to something else then you have totally the wrong idea.

 

Just a small tip for next time this happens:
-turn your laptop off, do a full power drain, take it appart and wash it with alcohol (found in pharmacies), let it dry and put it back together.

 

I'm still left with no responses to the actual questions!

What can I salvage?

Can I easily swap in the old hard drive in place of the new so that I can easily access old files and keep installed programs like Microsoft Word, etc?

 

The answers to your questions completely depend on the extent of the liquid damage.

If the hard drive isn't damaged, you can swap it in, should be ok as long as the interface is compatible.

 

My answer to your question is that you can salvage 0% of the laptop if you disassemble it wrong.

 

Fair enough, but I don't think I disassembled it wrong. Yes, I shouldn't have pulled the aluminum off considering that it was glued, but that has nothing to do with the software/hardware problems I'm having.

I would also hope that one could come to such a place as this and not get snarked at. A core purpose of this forum is for beginner-intermediate users such as myself to ask advice from advanced users (presumably) such as yourself. If the usual response is to get mocked without any useful response, then there really is no point to such a place.

 

Like I said, though, it depends on the damage. Without seeing the components in person, it's impossible to determine what condition they're in.

 

ram, CPU, LCD, and hard drive probably survived. You can also ebay your power adaptor. the RAM and CPU should be an easy sell, LCD maybe if you're lucky and someone else with a compatible laptop broke theirs

 

It should be taken apart to figure out the damage and clean all the fluid remnants. If only keyboard was damaged you could replace that (and the bent/broken cover part) and continue using the laptop as before.

Everything can be sold for parts, even the chassis. It's just matter of finding the buyer. Extensive photos of the parts, perfect model numbers and everything are essential to list so people will find them using search engines.

 

Alright, its a bit difficult to tell exactly what you're asking here though.

Here is one useful answer. You can use the same hard drive, as long as its on the same chipset. So no, it wont boot on the qx411, you would have to reinstall windows. But, it WILL boot on ANY hm55 or similar chipset.

The reason for my comment was not pure snarkiness. Maybe I should explain more. If you're going to sell a laptop for parts, then you just sell the whole thing as is. But if you're going to sell the individual parts, the 1st step is knowing exactly how to disassemble it correctly without damaging anything, and what survived or not depends on this as well.

I thought you had stopped disassembling it after you found the glued parts?

Anyway, here is my general advice. I would either just fix it properly, or sell the whole thing for parts while removing as many parts as possible with the amount you already have it disassembled.
It sounds like the laptop still boots, you can sell it "for parts POSTS" or "boots to BIOS" which will get a lot of people interested in it.
You can use pictures to your advantage here, even omit a picture of the keyboard as long as you state it has water and major cosmetic damage.
I think you'd probably get 200 or more for it regardless of the parts you have removed such as HDD.

The simplest way to get started again with a new laptop is to buy ANY laptop that uses the same CPU chipset, so anything with a 1st gen i series CPU and your old HDD will boot again.

P. S. Individual specs mean a lot sometimes in terms of value. This whole thing would be a bigger deal if your CPU was top of the line or something, so you should probably find out those specifics.

 

Thanks for the replies. I actually ended up purchasing an HP Probook 4530s from Newegg - it looks like a nice rig and was "only" $485.

That said, I am bummed to hear that I won't be able to access my old hard-drive through it. Is that true? Is there anyway to access the old hard-drive from the Samsung QX410 on the new 4530s? We also have a two-year old HP dm4 with an AMD processor, and a 4-5 year old HP Pavilion running Vista, so there is some flexibility. Can I attach the Samsung HD to any of these three computers? What I'm hoping to avoid is swapping my 10,000+ songs over the old-fashioned way on a flash drive, which takes hours and hours.

 

USB to SATA adapter will do what you want.
You can also get an external enclosure and put the old drive in it, use the drive as an external drive.

17" Pavilions have two hard drive slots but it needs an adapter.

 

No one's snarking at you, it just that your question reminds a lot of people of their similar clumsy mistake. I know it certainly does for me:

I spilled an entire 16 oz of Gatorade onto my laptop and wept like an infant. Afterwards people can laugh at their dumb mistakes. In my case, the liquid wicked into the display and made a terrible mess and my laptop unusable.

In any event, I learned a valuable lesson after that. I still make fun of myself but was thinking about me. It was meant as banter, not to be derogatory. I hope you will agree that there are some very well informed people here.

 

After many years of drinking around computers (open and closed) I have yet to spill anything.

Just be aware where you place things and don't leave a drink near by with kids around lol.

I would look into getting the service manual if you intend to do any more work on the machine.

 

Meaker -- you are now cursed!

I had a wine spill a couple years back on my laptop. I got it working again, but had to spend $150 in replacement parts to get it working right. Then my USB ports were flaky.