Well damn...

Drinking milk. Spills on laptop. My laptop now is inoperational; typing on an old desktop from ~2005. Thoughts?

 

You immediately unplugged it and removed the battery?

If that is the case, give it some time to dry, you might want to remove the keyboard to clean it as well as what's underneath.

Once you're certain it's dry, try it again and hopefully, you'll have nothing that fried. Otherwise, something is probably toast.

 

Fixed.............

 

Man that laptop is going to stink after the milk have dried out. Yuck

 

I open my laptop up, find the spill spots and clean it thoroughly with alcohol.

 

Fixed for real

The code for strikethrough is using <> brackets

Anyways, if it were my laptop, i'd do a complete disassemble and thorough full cleanup wherever possible using IPA, but that's not for everyone.

 

IPA!? I love IPA!

 

Lol, not bad.

I was referring to isopropyl alcohol of course.

 

I turned it off after about 30 seconds, I did unplug everything right away. (Including battery) Unfortunately I tried it a little while ago.... hope that didn't break anything. Bad feeling.

 

I have no clue what your talking about

 

Doing a stealth edit on me are we ?

To OP, if you tried turning it on shorty after the spill, yeah that could be bad news.

 

What did it do? Did you power it up and it shut itself down? If so you probably killed it.

 

It actually did nothing.

 

what brand/model laptop ?

P.S. 2% milk -> drink responsibly

 

Rice works on phones dropped in water... what about in this instance? Worth a shot.......

 

I feel sorry for you but it is a unfortunate lesson learnt.

I hope in a couple of days it will work. You really shouldn't have turned it on so soon.


I also recommend as said already MAJOR clean up before turning on, Open it up and clean all the milk off as when it dries it will leave a film.

 

The only reason it wouldn't work even if you turned it on is because of trace elements shorting the system. Eliminate the trace elements (milk), your likelihood of success is pretty high. Just buy a high % isopropyl alcohol, open up your system, and clean the areas of contamination, and possibly everything else. The only thing that MAY need to be replaced is the keyboard. Those things are so darn sensitive, and impossible to clean, so have a USB one on standby.

 

If I spilled any liquid I wouldn't turn it on. I would open it up as much as I could and blast dry hot air into it.

Anyway, I say there is a 99% chance that your laptop is toast. If something shuts off from getting wet, there seems to be a better than even chance of it bouncing back. But as soon as you try turning on something that got wet while it is still wet, you've doomed yourself.

What is weird though is that cellphones seem to be much much more resilient than computers with regards to surviving getting wet. I have honestly never seen a phone killed by getting wet. They always seem to work after drying out.

In a related note, I had a friend barf on his laptop a few months ago. Bye bye laptop.

 

more like bye bye friend....lol, also, bye bye laptop, i would get the hard drive and throw the thing into the garbage lol.


cellphones are more resistant because they are built with the knowledge that people will dunk them into the water. They will have water-resistant features such as: tight seals, liquid drains, sealant coatings*. Of course, all this depends on costs....

*that is definitely not the correct term - think of the stuff that you spray on your winter boots to keep them waterproof - obviously not literally the same stuff.

 

Don't paint a doomsday scenario, because it's not that bad. It may NOT come back. But things don't get fried because there's something bridging the contacts. It just gets confused and doesn't work. Clean it all off and chances are quite good that it will work again.

IMHO it's worth a shot. Open it up and clean it out. What do you have to lose!?

 

Wah?? My $400 iPhone was "built with the knowledge that people will dunk them into water?" You sneeze by an iPhone and it gets liquid damage.

 

its actually $700?

exaggeration aside, there have been multiple accounts of people saving their iphones from the toilet with the aid of rice.

triggering the water damage indicator isn't necessarily water damage - i've actually heard of it being triggered by high humidity.

 

+1 on just try IPA. I work at a cell store, and many of my customers phones who have gotten dunked in water (and sometimes worse) have been at least returned to partially working with a good scrub with a nylon brush and IPA. +1 also on replacing the keyboard. That will most likely need it.

 

Oh yeah, that too. I go to the dollar store and buy a 3 or 4 pack of soft bristle toothbrushes and use those dunked in IPA to scrub everything clean.

 

Works wonders. Take out the mother board and remove the fan/heatsink and scrub away. Once it dries, get yourself some thermal paste and re-paste the CPU/GPU and power the sucker on. The great thing about IPA is that once enough contaminants are off the board, no residue is left behind. I've dunked phones that were on in IPA, and they don't even care.

 

Wow... there is seemingly no documentation on how to disassemble the brand. Removed like 10 screws... although that's hardly productive. Didn't budge...

Think I'm going about it all wrong!

 

Its probably about time to start applying an unreasonable amount of pressure to the underside of your hinge cover.

What laptop is this?

For the keyboard, HOT water. Fixed a keyboard like that recently, worked perfectly after about 8 hours of drying when the keys stuck before.

Might be a good time to try and relax while using your IPA with a good IPA like sierra nevada torpedo. Don't worry, chances are it will work again if it was working while there was liquid on it.

 

Toshiba Satellite P755... Keys feel fine and stuff. Although that is almost surely not what you meant.

 

I did mean if the keys stuck, you should use hot water, but that was an aside.

If you still haven't gotten it apart, then the hinge cover is almost definitely the problem. They tend to be clipped on with lots of screws hiding underneath.

 

if you had iPhone 4S then Siri would have shown the nearest place you can buy napkins

OP: just open the laptop and clean whatever you see covered with dried milk. Of course you can always use 4500 psi pressure washer to do so, but I dont really recommend it, lol. Then try again to power it on and see what happens.

I had a Nokia phone a while ago and I dropped it in the pool while talking to somebody. Until I get it out of the water, it stayed some 1.5 min (was winter so pool closed). Opened it up, dried out for couple hours, and bam, working. For a week though, then it died out of nowhere, lol.

 

The P755 should be the same as my P750, easy to take apart.

First take all of the screws out of the bottom.

Take out the ram and HDD.

Then pry the keyboard out (be gentle).

Then take out the screws under the keyboard (*Important*). Disconnect the TV tuner and wifi card.

Now you should be able to take the notebook apart, dont use too much force.

The bios battery is soldered onto the motherboard, going to be hard to disconnect it.

However there is a small pad which is under the ram, if you complete the circuit by shorting out that pad, the bios should be reset. Might be good to know, not sure if it's helpful in this situation.

Most likely will need a new mobo, try ebay.

If you're going to part it out, I might be interested in the screen, depends on the resolution.

 

Maybe late, but some of the opinions in http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo-ibm/585936-spilled-70-alcohol-thinkpad-t410.html may be of use.

 

If you use water anywhere in the cleaning process, use distilled, not tap...fewer pollutants/particles/gook.

 

Deionized would be better, but good luck finding that. Anyways, just use isopropyl alcohol, most substances that can be dissolved in water can be dissolved in IPA. I said most, not all.

 

Well... It's been two days since.. I'm going to just open it up now.

 

It doesn't matter what water you clean it with. Crap on the motherboard doesn't make a difference. If it's not conductive or corrosive, it doesn't matter.

 

I can't see how this would would be done... where exactly would I get 'under' it (I suppose)?

I also can't seem to get the upper screws out... they're super-secure.

EDIT: Well.. I gave up and reassembled it. Plugged it in. There is a power light.. will attempting to power it now cause any potential damage?

 

Try sticking a flat head screwdriver in the crack around the keyboard.

 

EDIT: Keyboard eventually popped out with enough careful work.. onwards!

 

Maybe you need the right tools:
7 ASSORTED PLASTIC PRY TOOLS FOR LAPTOP,CELLPHONE,IPAD,IPHONE,IPOD,GBA,GBA | eBay

 

I edited my post, it just needed a little careful prying. I was just being over-worrying.

Now I'm at a loss again...

Seems to all be pretty secure and together yet. I could perhaps be seeing this wrong.. maybe the top should separate from the bottom instead? I only doubt this because of the light hookups and such, but I could be wrong again...

 

The top does separate from the bottom, but make sure every single screw is out before you try to pry it apart.

 

Hmm... alrighty.

These last two screws refuse to budge.

 

I was pretty sure I was going to just buy a new computer in a while. But just now, I (hopelessly) tried to start it, and it is indeed powering up. Stopping after a few seconds, but this will replicate. I assume residue is confusing the motherboard, as HTWingNut suggested.

If only I could remove those two screws....

 

Get alcohol, 90% or higher, or denatured. Poor alcohol into a basin, submerge entire laptop in alcohol, pick it up and let it drain for a minute then it do again a few times.

Set it out to dry overnight.

Voila.

 

I am sure it doesn't have to be said but if you do this be sure you remove the battery. I would also remove the HD and personally I wouldn't soak the LCD.

 

I think he meant soaking the motherboard only. No sane person soaks the entire laptop which will probably be the end of the LCD, speakers, mic, HDD etc.


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No I think he meant the entire laptop Quote: submerge entire laptop in alcohol, pick it up and let it drain for a minute then it do again a few times.

In a post just before the OP said he could not remove the last two screws to get the laptop apart, so what to do now. Hence, the soaking response. I could live without the speakers or mic but geez that would have to be a last resort. There are many ways to get screws out (even if you have to drill the heads off) so you could get the laptop apart.

 

OK. You are right. I haven't read his post carefully.


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Hmm. Today I decided to randomly try the laptop again, and it is indeed working. Windows and all core hardware is functioning perfect. The only problem is indeed the keyboard, which has no response to my interaction. It does, however, seem to be sticking random keys occasionally without my pressing them.