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Yet again- beer on desktop

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haut

New Member
Joined
Oct 14, 2009
Few nights ago I spilled a fair quantity of beer ALL OVER and RIGHT INSIDE my Lenove laptop (yet again as it's a shameful second time with in about a month- it survived the first time). I immediately turn the computer upside down for about half an hour and then tried to switch on, with battery and all. I'll cut to the results- needless to say the computer is sticky inside and out and stinks of beer; keyboard not working incl built-in mouse; usb are working and I manage to use external keyboard and mouse but the computer then froze and when I restarted it wouldn't go beyond the Windows start up screen.

I tried to restore the system with recovery cds and it all looks fine right until it's about to start the recovery when it freeze and wrrites- recovery failed to start.

Can anyone out there advice me on what to do (besides the obvious cutting down on alcohol)? Can it be a hd issue? Will an alcohol bath do and if so could someone please explain how to do it or send link to material about it?

Many thanks
 
1. Half an hour isn't enough to let it try, you should bathe it in rice for 24 hours to be 100% secure before turning it on.
2. If the computer still works and you got lucky, the circuits may not be dead, the keyboard and mouse failure are properly because the sheets with the key circuit are stuck together, this should be fixable by taking the computer completely apart and cleaning those sheets.

That's all I can suggest.

Oh, and alcohol bath? The irony is painful.
 
Just to elaborate on the alcohol bath. You want to use the highest % of isopropyl alcohol you can find. The higher the % the less water it contains and it should evaporate faster. Let it dry for at least 48-72hrs. Laptops are a pain to take apart completely. A service manual will definitely come in handy.

A quick google gave me this list of service manuals

Good luck and :welcome: to the forums
Oh and you don't have to cut down on the drinking. You just may want to drink away from your laptop to avoid sharing a cold one with it in the future. :beer:

Any reason this is the seti forum? You may want to PM a mod to have this moved ;)
 
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I highly recommend taking pics of each stage and tape the screws to the photo's and number them in the proper order.

If you don't you risk driving a screw that is too long through some valuable component. during re-assembly.

Also, dont wait a week to put it back together. Take it apart, clean it, and put it back together in the same day or you risk not remembering how it goes back together.
 
+1 to this ^. Also use something to separate the different length screws. An egg shell container would work great.
 
Thank you all for replies and warm welcome, thank you Albaholic for link..

I'll immerse myself in cleaning and, hopefully, log back soon to tell you everything works better than before.

But before I start... are there any parts I should definitely AVOID cleaning? And when you say clean, do you literally mean taking cloth and wiping the whole thing, getting into all the bits and bobs???

Thanks again
 
:welcome: to OCF!


You wasted a BEER?!? ALCOHOL ABUSE!!! :D

Assuming you didn't short anything you should be fine. Clean everything with alcohol - don't pour it on but moisten a (relatively) lint-free cloth with it and gently wipe down the surfaces that need cleaning. A little elbow grease is better then more alcohol. A folded coffee filter (they're lint-free) should work OK to get into the sockets if needed. If the filter rips a little inside the socket be sure to get all the little pieces out. Since it's beer it should be pretty obvious what's effected and what isn't. Good luck!


BTW - I reported your post. Should be moved to the laptops section soon ... ;)
 
how ironic that you have to pour more alcohol on it to clean off the alcohol you already poured on it
 
This reminds me of the warranty on our college supplied laptops...it covered everything 100% except lightning and damage from alcoholic drinks...lol. Mine ended up getting struck by lightning, along with another laptop, 2 TVs, microwave, and oven...:bang head
 
One trick for remember how the screws go back in is to lay them on the table in a sort of map, lay them out on the table in the arrangement that matches how they go into the computer. I've done this when taking apart my iBook since many of the screws were of different lengths (even then, I still had an extra screw when I was done putting it back together LOL).
 
I just use an 18 slot egg crate. Each components screws get their own slot one after the other so putting it back together is just working backwards through the egg crate. If I have a component that has more than one size of screw then each size gets a slot next to each other.
 
This reminds me of the warranty on our college supplied laptops...it covered everything 100% except lightning and damage from alcoholic drinks...lol. Mine ended up getting struck by lightning, along with another laptop, 2 TVs, microwave, and oven...:bang head

That sounds like my luck...
 
Yea did this few months ago... heh but I didn't even try to turn it on for 24 hrs after I cleaned it cause I didn't want to risk shorting anything
 
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