I have dreamed a dream, but now that dream is gone from me.

I spilled a cup of coffee on my M86, and it instantly fried. Why'd I make a thread about it? Good question. Answer: Shut up.

I could have cheated to take advantage of my warranty, but I was straight up with R&J Tech, and they want me to send it in for an estimate. If it's just the mainboard, it will be at least $480. So, at what price does it begin to make more sense to just buy a brand new machine? Even ~$500 is pushing it for me. Is the M860TU even worth a $500 repair? My nightmare scenario is that I get the board replaced now, and risk having the CPU or GPU fail due to the spill at a later date. Say I spend $480 now, then the 260M fails next month. That's another $450+, at which point I could've spent that $900+ on a shiny new W870CU barebones. That possibility is what has me hesitating to get the repairs done.

If the CPU and GPU are deemed okay, I'm thinking that it might be a better move to just sell them as individual parts then put that ~$700 towards a new computer.

Leave advice and condolences below.

Random thought: Is there any regular member here, who would be able/willing to receive my CPU/GPU for testing?

tl;dr version - fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

 

If yer GPU and CPU are OK, I think yer idea of selling them off and buying something new is sound.

That definitely sucks though. Sorry to hear it.

 

My advice is to first wait for the damage evaluation and then take a decision.

 

Definitely wait for the quote, then think.

@Clevo Start making spill-resistant keyboards already!
Evolve, ffs! You see we are total noobs and with all the techno-progress we can only get clumsier! Take that into consideration!

 

As others have already mentioned; wait for quote, if it's too high, then sell it off piece by piece.

BTW i might be interested in that CPU -- if it works of course.

 

An excuse to upgrade to i7!

 

So it somehow awoke itself from hibernation.

New notes:

- the LED lights now acknowledge the A/C power
- the touchpad is inoperable
- some of the keyboard works; I was able to enter my password and enter Windows
- the Power button and Hotkeys do not work. Well, to be precise, all four of them act as if they're the Silent Mode key.

So is it safe to say that the motherboard is not FUBAR?

If it comes to it, the CPU is yours.

I'm trying, but it seems to be coming back to life.

 

i feel your pain... my condolences, good luck with the repair/replacement

 

Good luck brother

 

i just tried a config at pctorue without accident protection, back to the website.

hope yours survives to fight another day!

 

Coke = syrup = sticky non-conductive residue.

That means isopryl and q-tips.

 

If you haven't already, give it some time to dry out, open it up and clean any residue from it; then wait, cross your fingers, and try it again.

Good luck.

 

Most household insurance will have an accident policy that would cover this. As mentioned above take the lappy apart and allow it to dry. I found a decent PC in a skip and allowed it to dry for two weeks. Everything was fine and I ended up with a decent Q6600 system for the cost of a hard drive and case.

 

dude just take it apart and clean / dry it up. do this before any rust starts to build up on the copper. it will be fine once it is cleaned up but you can't just let it sit there to dy itself.

 

You shouldn't have turned it on. You should have left it to dry for a while to make sure there's no more liquid inside. I once spilled a whole bowl of noodles and soup (don't ask) on my laptop. I turned it off immediately and didn't turn it on for a week and even used a blow dryer on it. Luckily, it continued to work without any problems. Never got the smell out though.

 

I came in, and somehow it had powered up and was sitting at the Windows login prompt. I definitely knew better than to boot it up otherwise.

I used ctrl-alt-delete to get it off as fast as I could.

 

Disassemble it bare and some alcohol cleaning should fix it.

lol i doubt you would have cheated warranty with all the internal mess

 

I once spilled orange juice on a laptop and immediately unplugged the AC and took out the battery, flipped it upside down. I put a fan near it for a day. It turned the next day but the keyboard are sticky as hell. After a week of moving my hand back and forth on the keyboard, all the keys are fine now. Good luck, bro I feel you.

 

Does putting a bag of silicon gel inside the laptop work? It worked for my phone (that mysteriously dropped in the toilet)...

I placed the phone in an airsealed bag with a bag of silicon gel, and voila worked after a week! Sucked out all the water in it. Maybe you could try that?

 

I heard of someone doing that with rice. It would work , just take longer but that only accounts for the moisture. Still need to cleanup the syrup residue.

 

When we say "take apart", how "apart" are we talking? I'm not really up to removing the motherboard.

 

Apart enough to access any remaining residue.

 

Try it with just the cover opened then if it still doesn't work then proceed further into the crevasses and things

 

Kevin_Jack 2.0, maybe you'll enjoy this while you try to fix your laptop:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=979DnuwA4pg

EDIT: the name of the topic reminded me of this song

 

Service manual in my sig as always, take it apart as much as you feel happy with to clean, then allow to dry and reassemble.

 

Should have been drinking beer instead.

I knocked a beer over and onto a Dell Inspiron once. Dried it out and it worked still. Just like me.

 

It's alive. It's aliiiiivvvvvveeee.

 

Nice to hear that!

 

Nice!! What'd you do?

 

Hooah!
Though it was kinda obvious

"Hamsters and Rangers everywhere - Rejoice!"

 

Out of disgust, I slid it under the couch. I'd pull it out once day to attempt power up. It finally came back to life.

Now, I just need to buy a new keyboard. I got a little to close with the blow dryer and melted some keys.

 

Good to hear! (minus the KB issue)

* Really was looking forward to that Q9200 though,sigh

 

Anyone know how to completely disable the hotkeys?

Since the spill, my Silent Mode button constantly clicks on/off, unless I hold it down. I've already uninstalled the driver, but they still work.

 

Since you have to get a new KB anyway why not just fix the hot keys by cleaning with some alcohol when you take it apart. In the future it is probably worth just pulling the laptop apart if you ever spill on it again and cleaning the keyboard instead of drying the liquid residue on it.