NP5760 // Spill

About a month ago I spilled a beer on my Sager NP5760 laptop. It was mostly around the upper left corner, so near the DVD drive. I turned the computer off more or less as soon as I could, and didn't try to turn it on again ... until the next day. I guess it wasn't fully dried. I know now that was probably a really bad idea. Anyway, it booted up and started beeping, a lot.

I haven't really touched it since. When I try to turn it on now, the splash screen that says Sager and has a red progress bar comes up and the bar gets all the way to full and then it just doesn't do anything else.

I took off the keyboard and plugged it back in, and since then I can enter BIOS again. But when I try to re-set the boot order (press right arrow a few times then the enter key) it starts to beep again.

So there's pretty clearly something wrong and I have no idea what part(s) is/are broken. How can I go about finding out what I need to replace/fix? I am NOT very saavy at hardware related issues, especially with laptops, I just know how to google and follow directions, soooo....

-Thanks

 

You don't want to wait for beer to dry. You want to get it out, because beer leaves sticky, conductive junk behind. The only thing you can "wait for it to dry" is water, and even sometimes that is a stretch.

First, STOP TURNING THE LAPTOP ON.
Pull out the battery!
EVERY TIME YOU PUT CURRENT INTO THAT LAPTOP, YOU ARE DAMAGING IT MORE. It may already be too late! But the fact that you can boot a little gives some hope... the laptop may not be dead - only crippled. You may even be able to fix it.

If you feel comfortable, you can take apart the whole laptop - and I mean the whole laptop. Using care, q-tips, pure acetone, and hours of your time, you may be able to clean off the beer from everything inside the laptop and be able to get it to pass its POST (the beeps are letting you know the POST has failed, and actually tell you specifically what). Basically, your laptop is testing its hardware when you power it on, and it's finding something wrong (something is obviously shorted out by the beer) and it has discovered that. Whether that component has been permanently destroyed by you turning on the laptop, I cannot say, the only way to find out is to clean it.

If you don't feel comfortable, you will have to either find someone to do this for you, or you will have to get a new laptop.

 

^^yup...

you really need to dismantle the entire notebook and clean off any and all parts of the spill.

then make sure its all clean and dry before firing it up again.

 

When I troubleshooted a M570RU which got a taste of water, the beeping was caused by the keyboard, which was short-circuited by some keys. Does it beep when you have the keyboard removed?

 

BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY

Did you at least save some of the beer? Pity to waste a good beverage.

 

At least someone here has his priorities straight!

 

Is there a place (online) I can learn how to safely do this? I have opened up the computer before but everything is so tightly packed in I wouldn't even know where to start to take the thing apart. I am willing to give it a try, I just don't know how. None of my (RL) friends know anything about this subject, so I can't really ask someone to show me. It's not that I don't want to spend $$ to fix a $2000 laptop, it's just that I don't really use it for anything except photoshop anymore which I have on my other computers, so I have time to spare. At the same time, I'd hate to see the computer go to waste.

And for inquiring minds, yes, I did get to drink about half the beer that was spilled.

 

I could not find a service manual, maybe someone else has the link for you.
I can usually take a laptop apart without a service manual. Just begin by removing everything you can (Optical, Hard Drive, Memory, Wireless Card, all bay doors). Then get one of those pill containers for every day of the week, and label each one "screen" "bottom" "top" etc so you have an idea of where the screws came from. Then just start taking out basically... every screw. Eventually stuff will apart, just be sure not to force anything.

 

Here is the service manual, everything you need should be in there...

M570U Service Manual