[Tfug] What to do if you spill liquid on a laptop - OS independent.

[Jim March]

OK, somebody (probably you!) just spilled something on your laptop.
What do you do?

*Immediately* yank the power cord, flip it so that the keyboard and
screen are both pointed "down" with the screen open at a normal 90deg
angle, and pull the battery out.  It should be angled like so: ^ and
in that position, set it down.  If you have to close it a bit tighter
than 90deg so it'll stay that way, OK, fine.  No more than 45deg if
possible.  This is the "tented" position and it keeps as much liquid
as possible off the motherboard and screen internals.

What to do next depends on the liquid.  In the case of something
corrosive, which includes:

* Vinegar;

* Cola or most other sodas;

* Anything with a lot of citrus content;

* Anything else acidic;

* Light alcoholic drinks such as beer or probably most wines.

...you need to open it up, take it completely apart and clean
everywhere the liquid touched.  Rubbing alcohol is by far the best and
safest cleaning agent.

You'll need to pull the keyboard and clean it thoroughly.  Believe it
or not, flushing it under hot tap water works great.  Dry it as best
you can with a towel and let it dry.  Be sure and pull out things like
the memory banks and WiFi cards and clean the contacts on both the
cards and motherboard with a Q-tip or the like and rubbing alky.  Be
also sure you get any tiny fibers out that could hose the connections!

What about straight water?

Well there's differing schools there.  The power-down part and tent it
is still vital - you must not apply power while the circuits are wet,
period, end of discussion.

I'm of the opinion that you are best off taking it at least partially
apart and applying a hair dryer to the insides FROM AT LEAST TWO FEET
AWAY - in other words, go slow, have patience, dry it the hell out.

There's an alternative though: bury it in dry rice!  I know, sounds
weird but the stuff sucks up water like crazy and sometimes from a
considerable distance IF there's not a lot of humidity in the air
(such as Arizona!).  You may still have to take the keyboard out and
painstakingly poke the rice out with a toothpick or the like -
something stiff but non-metallic, wood or plastic.  This will likely
work better if it's somewhat hot - on a cold winter night like right
now that water won't want to travel as far and is more likely to make
something rust, I think.  (The rice trick is also well-known for
cellphones and the like, and yet again, pull the battery first!)

Only once everything is dry do you bolt it back together and re-apply power.

Now, if you don't know how to take a laptop apart...well, honestly, if
you're on a budget and really depend on your lappy, you need to do two
things ahead of time: google for a good set of teardown instructions
and bookmark them on another computer or otherwise keep them
available, and go spend $16 at Radio Shack for a set of
laptop-and-small-electronics screwdriver bits:

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3932539

If you let a laptop sit overnight either wet or esp. with something
corrosive inside, it won't live to morning and a trip to a repair
shop.  OK?  Flat out, there will be corroded contacts somewhere and
you're looking at a new motherboard minimum.  Plus labor, and if it's
an older rig it might not even be worth it.

I saved a laptop of my own some years back from a coke spill at a TFUG
event.  I powered it down and "tented" it within seconds as described,
finished the meet, did a full teardown and cleanout at home that same
night.  The only damage was to the WiFi card and I had another
available that turned out to have more range and better drivers so no
biggie.  I have it on good authority that the critter lived to a ripe
old age and probably still works as somebody's backup machine - I sold
it with full disclosure of it's history about a year post-spill.  If
I'd had to buy another WiFi card it would have been $20 or less on
Fleabay, $35 tops at SWS in Tucson or cheaper at Fry's in Phoenix.

This was brought on by a recent post describing somebody else's spill :).

Oh yeah.  One last thing.  Let's say the sucker really ends up dead.
Maybe it shorted hard before you were able to pull the power.  It
happens.  Odds are the hard disk is still OK.  And since we're running
Linux or the like, we're in luck: that same drive/OS set can boot some
other computer just fine, with maybe a bit of video driver tweaks or
whatever.  So you can find any laptop that takes the same sort of
drive, new or used, bolt your old drive in, odds are you're right
there back in biz with no farting around.  You can even bolt it into a
desktop if you need to get up fast and just don't have access to
another lappy yet.

I would recommend running a disk diagnostics set to see if the HD took
any minor damage along the way though - something like Disk Utility
from the latest Ubuntu family (Lucid forward) will do nicely.

Jim

PS: what if you spill mineral oil on it!?  Well other than cleaning
the keyboard and letting the majority of it drain, don't worry about
it!  It's non-corrosive, non-conducting.  You can run a whole computer
dipped in a tank of the stuff no sweat, and some people into extreme
overclocking do exactly that!