Need help fixing laptop.

[K2edg]

Hi all.

I'm after a bit of a pointer really, i have a Laptop that got a glass of water poured into it by a muppet i work with. I have been playing with it in an attempted to see if i could get it working again.

Ok so the starting point of the laptop after it was properly dried by me, i put a good battery on it but it showed no signs of life. It also had a Damaged Keyboard as the guy in question melted the keys with a hot air gun

So bit of messing later decided the Mobo was beyond redemption so i got another that was second hand but had been tested, fitted it and now the light comes on when its on charge and if i turn it on the "On" light comes on and the cpu fan starts up but no screen and no hard drive movement etc. I thought the screen may be bad so i plugged it into a Monitor and there was still no picture.

I don't know if it makes any difference but the new Mobo CDRW port is a Sata rather than an IDE so i don't have a Disk drive in it at the moment.

Does anyone have any ideas what to look at next? TBH i'm just playing with it for fun but it would be nice to get it going.

 

[cyberkost]

Well, you should try to test one component at a time to the extent possible, so that you know exactly what is bad and what does not need replacing. HDD and optical drive can be taken out and tested by themselves. LCD could be factored out (until everything else is tested) by using external monitor (LCD also has at least couple of components: LCD and the inverter/backlighting). You have couple of motherboards now -- are you SURE that the 2nd one you got is problem free?
If multiple stick of RAM -- use only one. In principem the system should be able to get to POST w/o keyboard, mouse, or any of the drives. You can try booting from CD and even getting to OS using something like Ubuntu LiveCD.

... that was quick (and incomplete brain dump) .. hoping at least some of it is not unhelpful.

 

[K2edg]

Yeh thats helped allot thanks.

So in theory the minimum it would need to post is the Motherboard,Processor and 1 stick of ram? I am not 100% sure the new Motherboard is fault free but i was told it worked fine (famous last words)

I'll keep playing with it and see if it gets me anywhere.

 

[cyberkost]

Well, I'm assuming that video is integrated onto the motherboard, so yes, that should be enough to POST (obviously, you'd need keyboard to get to the BIOS setup and change settings there). Not sure about laptop mobos, but most ATX mobos beep in certain way when they cannot boot and there's a mapping of the kind of beeping they do and the problem (e.g., one long one + short beep -> RAM, simply one long -> video, etc. <-- these are thought out examples). You can try booting w/o any RAM and check whether or not you mobo is alive enough to signal what might be the problem (provided it is equipped to do so in the first place).

 

[K2edg]

Yeh i'm thinking its the Mobo thats causing my headache......

I have been playing with it quite a bit in different configurations, it just doesn't want to post. i have now tested the Ram,hard drive in another laptop and i have two or three processors which i know two work for sure. So i'm thinking its a faulty mobo.

I messed about with it too see if i could make it beep or make some noise but apart from the power light and the cpu cooler fan there is no other signs of life.

 

[kayson]

Most of the time liquid + laptop = certain death. Even if you replace the mobo, there's a good chance that a lot of the other components got damaged as well. I had the exact same problem you're having while I tried to fix a Dell laptop that had milk spilled on it. I ended up giving up. A new mobo might help but your original post said it had been tested already?

 

[K2edg]

I bought the Mobo off e-bay so i don't rule out the possibility that its faulty.

 

[cyberkost]

oh-well ... not that we can prove it conclusively, but I'd try to get the money back from ebay if you spend a significant amount. Sell the laptops for parts ("as-is") and buy yourself a new one (I know it may be easier said than done, but you need to reward yourself for the effort). Do justice to the muppet too .. we won't tell anybody.