I spilt water on the keyboard of my lovely laptop yesterday and now it’s as dead as a dodo. Do you think there is any hope of ressurecting it?
You may be lucky: firstly it needs to dry out ( switched off of course). Then a double course of crossed fingers. Enough crossed and you MAY be fine. Otherwise it depends upon where the water reached, what the design of the keyboard is, whether is let any water through to areas more prone to damage. No guarantees of course, but if broken it COULD just be the keyboard. Keep it warm for a while. If the worst comes to the worst, then it is highly unlikely that your hard drive, and the data it holds, has been damaged. I would place bets that your data is safe.
Water is better for a keyboard than coffee, but not necessarily something that you should make a habit of pouring between the keys. If you are able to remove the keyboard ( often not easy on a laptop ) then do so whilst it dries to speed the process. Remove any slide in bits: batteries, DVD player etc etc.
Nao
Everything Naomi said.
Let it dry out for a few days.
Ducttape dropped his mobile phone down the toilet and it was okay after it dried out.
There is hope.
You could (not tested by me, but I’ve heard it works) pour some rubbing acohol on the area that you spilled, as it evaporates fast and take the water with it.
Not 100% sure though.
My brother spilled Gorrila Glue on our desktop’s keyboard a few weeks ago.
We waited untill it dried out then popped it off with a knife. That won’t help you though, I don’t think…
Here’s a prelim GOOGLE on the rubbing alcohol idea.
Here’s a ‘how to’.
I’m with Naomi in believing your data to be secure.
But you won’t know till John Childs gets here I’m afraid.
Depending on how far the water go into the laptop… either just your keyboard is now fried, or lots more stuff is fried.
Your data however, is fine.
Some people go to the extreme when handing computer hardware, such as anti-static wrist bands, but honestly, it is relatively hard to damage hardware with the exception of submersion in water, or physical damage, or electric shock.
Honestly, you can slide a hard drive across a carpet and it’s 99% likely that it will still work. The other 1% is people who drag their feet, or run live wires into their carpet for some retarded reason?
The only piece of hardware I ever destroyed was an old CPU I had lying around, and I did it by overclocking it and overvolting it far beyond it’s capabilities… to which I cooked an egg in a tin foil pan I made for it.
Send it in for repairs, it’s probably just a fried keyboard. Some laptops are really picky, and if one thing isn’t working right, nothing works.
Ah, good point. The stuff on the hard drive.
If the laptop turns out to be dead, the hard drive may not have been damaged by the water, especially if it’s buried deep inside the laptop (like near the bottom). You will probably want to copy your files off the drive and put them on some other computer – maybe a new laptop.
For about $20 (USD) you can buy a 2.5" drive enclosure. You can take the disk drive out of the laptop (usually there is a compartment on the bottom, but sometimes it’s in a more difficult to reach place), stick the drive into the drive enclosure, then plug the drive enclosure (via its USB cable) into another computer. Your laptop hard drive will show up as a removable drive on the other computer. Then you can copy stuff off that drive.
If you do buy a drive enclosure, you want one for 2.5" drives (laptop drives). The drives in a desktop computer are 3.5".
But I, too, am optimistic about the laptop being okay. Of course you’ve unplugged it, but have you removed the battery? I don’t think you want any power anywhere until it dries out.
Yup. Water on a desktop keyboard can render the keyboard inoperable till the water dries and/or the keyboard is disassembled so the trapped water can escape from between various membranes. The drying process for a desktop keyboard can take days.
There is reason to be optimistic.
Removing the battery and also keeping the laptop unplugged is also a good idea so you don’t have to worry about electrical shorts frying something.
I have to wonder if that guy can ride a unicycle.
Interesting experiment, oil being an insulator, and a conductor of heat of course. However, I wouldn’t want to remove and replace any component now. Disturb any of those contacts and you then have a neat layer of insulating oil on them. With the low voltages used in computer circuitry, it does not take much oil to render the contact points useless.
PS: I too had the misfortune to drop my mobile phone into the toilet bowl, luckily whilst is was only occupied by water. it stopped working of course. I dismantled it, battery, SIM out etc. All works fine again now, but it did take quite some time to dry out the keyboard.
Nao
Thanks, I’m keeping my fingers crossed for the laptop. someone’s coming to pick it up next week. In the meantime my friend will retrieve my data from the hard disk. Luckily I’m pretty good with the back ups so it’s just some photos from the past couple of months, a mornings work on my thesis and some email bits and bobs that I haven’t got backed up.
!!!EEK!!!
Oh no! Losing a mornings work on your thesis is a catastrophe! That is TRULY AWFUL!!!
To have to re-do even one minute of the thesis experience is something INTOLERABLE!!!
----Albert Ellis
Very funny. and if it was actually the writing up of the thing, this may be true. But it was only part of the messing about with the data.
Let me guess.
Swingball?
no Bill Gates found out he has switched to Linux and came round to take care of business personally.
Oh dear! But not irrepairable…I have replaced quite a few broken laptop screens in the past. Nowadays, with vastly cheaper laptops, it might just be economically irrepairable.
Nao
Looks like Linux crashed? 
I’m so sorry for your loss. He was a fine laptop and deserved better. He was so young and full of life. It was a shock to us all.