Thermal Sensor Error after a coffee spill

Yesterday, I spilled a lot of coffee on my laptop. I turned it off as fast as I could (held the power button to turn it off asap, then pulled out the power cord and removed the battery), then removed the back panel and the keyboard to mop up the coffee, washed the keyboard, and dried everything out for 24hrs. Some coffee did get in under the keyboard tray, and it was already in the battery compartment when I was taking it out, but I couldn't see how far it got . There was nothing on the side of the motherboard where the fan, the RAM, etc are located, but there had to be some on the side of the motherboard that's toward the keyboard.

Today, I put back the keyboard, etc, and tried to boot. The screen was black with a blinking cursor for half a minute or so, then it flashed to the regular Fujitsu boot screen, then it flashed to a screen saying

Fixed Disk 0: FUJITSU MJA2500BH G2
ATAPI CD-ROM: MATADVD-RAM UJ870-BJ
Mouse initialized
ERROR
02FB: Thermal Sensor Error, System shutdown in 30s.
Contact Fujitsu tech support.

[F12]:Boot Menu / [F2]:BIOS Setup​

But it didn't respond to the keyboard. I tried turning it off and unplugging and plugging the KB back in, but I got the same thing. The fan was spinning when I tried to boot it. There were no beeps, and there usually aren't while booting.

I called Fujitsu and they said there's nothing they can do over the phone. They said to go to Microcenter, but it looks like Microcenter charges $70 to tell me what's wrong. Fujitsu said that some of the things that might be wrong are that I need a replacement CPU, or, maybe I just need thermal grease. If I do need a new CPU, then it's not worth the money, I guess $300, esp. if there's also a keyboard problem, plus the $70 for diagnostics and who-knows-what for replacing it (cause what if it's not the CPU, I don't want to buy a CPU myself and then have it turn out that that's not it).

Any ideas/opinions on what to do? Does it make sense that it's the CPU given it failed after the HDD, optical drive, and touchpad in the boot sequence? (I didn't ask Fujitsu that; the guy sounded like he wanted to get rid of me.)

(This is Fujitsu NH570, i7-620M, 18.4" screen, and I'm now going crazy typing this on a 10.1" netbook.) I'd appreciate anything...

 

hope it didnt have sugar in it as that makes it worse.
leaving it 24 hours isnt really long enough but too late now.
the best advice when this happens is everything you done but putting the whole laptop in a bowl of rice which will dry the liquid up a lot quicker.

you need to remove the hard drive and ram to check the contacts are not sticky as if they are they could be damaged as well.
when you do try again i would try on battery only first. then remove battery and try on mains only.

hope its not too badly damaged but it doesnt sound good

 

Lol if that was their suggestion for liquid damage. Your thermal sensor specifically may or may not be bad, but you almost certainly have damage to the PCB. Over time, it will probably get worse too. Sometimes you can salvage liquid damage by using rice (as MrDj kindly suggested).

I'd say to salvage it is a long shot at this point, but here are some tips you can refer to. Hopefully you can get it up and running!

 

great link Prostar. thanks for posting.

 

Thanks. Always glad to help as best I can!

 

Sweet Jesus mother of Mary, it's alive! 48h after the spill, it works (while 12h ago was too soon). The keyboard is still dead, but I'ma go get a temporary external and maybe this one will still dry out. There might be crumbs way under the keys that absorbed water and are still not dry. If I do need a new keyboard ($30), I'ma get the UK version because it's white!

Any suggestions on what to do going forward, other than "back up often"? I'm also getting a SATA enclosure so I don't have to go crazy again to get my dataz like I did yesterday - those things are not easy to find at a B&M. I'm sure Prostar is right and it is gonna die, but I don't have a gauge on when because I'd need to take it out of the case to see the area-under-the-keyboard where most of the coffee would be, and there are a lot of connections going through the keyboard tray that I might not be able to put back together correctly if I take off the case. I suppose when it does die, it might go without a warning, but I don't want to shop for a new laptop now if I can avoid it. (When it does die, I might want a different size of a machine, but for now, what I want is what I have which is 18.4" and hard to find at a bargain since they are so few.)

 

good news, glad to hear its alive.
told ya 24 hours wasnt long enough

 

Yeah, since the spill may gradually seep into the PCB and cause oxidation in some areas, just be sure to back up your stuff. But heck, that's awesome that it's functional again! Back to the coffee pot for seconds now!