Help! I spilled coffee all over my laptop :(

[Stovey]

Help! I spilled coffee all over my laptop and I think its toast. :(

It started acting funny shortly thereafter, not recognizing the keyboard, and mousepad, etc. Funny thing, just before it crashed, Ubuntu gave a pop-up warning that I should employ a back-up strategy in case of catastrophic failure. Now when I try to start-up, the lap-top just beeeeeeeps with a black screen.

Is my lap-top fried? If so is anything salvageable?

[dmouck]

It sounds like it may be, but don't give up hope yet.

I'm sure you've already turned off your computer which is the first thing you do on a spill. If you're able to remove the hard drive, do so and see if there is any spill on the surface of the drive. Do you have a way to connect it externally to another computer to verify that your data is intact?

If you have a second computer, see if you can find the service manual for your model # of laptop. if you are experienced (or if you are VERY careful), you can always disassemble the laptop to see how deep the spill is. It is often contained to the keyboard, depending on how much is spilled. If there is any spill or corrosion on the motherboard, you can wipe it with some rubbing alcohol and a microfiber cloth and let it dry.

Once everything it cleaned and dried, reassemble it and see if it boots or beeps. If it beeps, check your laptop manual for a beep code to figure out what it's trying to tell you.

Good luck! Spills happen to the best of us. It's easy to say "Be more careful next time", but I have been there my brother so I wont' judge :D

[winh8r]

Remove battery

Do as suggested by dmouck and pay particular attention to removing the ram stick/card, clean and dry this carefully and put it somewhere warm but not too hot.

Then use a hairdryer set on the coldest setting, no closer than about eight inches from the machine, to thoroughly dry the ram socket. This could take a while as the gaps in there are tiny and you need to get all the moisture out of there.

Do the same for the hard drive socket.

Make sure you do not power up the laptop for at least five days, and in this time keep it in a warm place and turn it regularly, by this I mean prop it up on its end with the lid closed against a stack of books, and turn it regularly to make sure all the fluid is drained.

You should be able to remove the keyboard fairly easily, and clean out the area underneath, again gently, then use the hairdryer again, do not use a hot setting on the hairdryer. You only want to circulate air around it quickly not cook it!!

I have seen two laptops get the spilled drink treatment and managed to save both, although in those cases they were powered down immediately and had the battery removed.

There is always hope though, and on the ones I did it was the ram sockets that were holding the moisture.

Hope you get it fixed though.

[Simian Man]

I'd suggest having not spilled coffee on it in the first place.

[BeRoot ReBoot]

Unplug the HDD and check if any data can be retrieved. Otherwise, properly destroy the HDD and any other data storage media, dispose of the rest of the laptop in accordance with your religious beliefs and buy a new one.

[eriktheblu]

Many laptops have easily removable internal drives. It may take some investment, but there are devices that can allow you to connect it to another machine via USB. This may be a safer way to attempt to recover data.

[Stovey]

Thanks. I did not shut it down immediately; I just gave the keyboard a quick wipe and continued to use it until it crashed. I will remember to shut it down fast the next time I spill coffee (or better yet I will try to avoid spilling coffee).

I guess I will take it apart and try to dry it, but I'm having trouble finding a service manual and I've never disassembled a laptop before. It's an Acer 1810T.

I'm just worried that the hardware is fried and I'm upset about wasting several hundred dollars.

I didn't lose any data. I have been keeping all my data on a memory stick for several years in anticipation of just such an occurrence. I plan to set-up a system for automatic back-ups (maybe some kind of server) but I'm not quite there yet.

[mips]

I guess I will take it apart and try to dry it, but I'm having trouble finding a service manual and I've never disassembled a laptop before. It's an Acer 1810T.

http://www.google.co.za/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cts=1331585553031&ved=0CC8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Ftim.id.au%2Flaptops%2Facer%2Faspi re%25201810t%25201410.pdf&ei=-GFeT5mjHIPOhAeksKW6BA&usg=AFQjCNHI_z4uoKMjF8IzRuaRq3bcSW7CuQ
http://www.scribd.com/doc/46691742/201-Service-Manual-Aspire-1810t-1410

Strip entire notebook, rinse parts (except HDD) with isopropyl alcohol and leave to dry for 48 hours and it should be good to go again.

[jasonrisenburg]

Put it in a bag of rice. The rice will absorb the liquid faster and clean up easier.

[1clue]

It's possible that you fried something by not shutting down and pulling the battery immediately, but that's not a foregone conclusion. There's a pretty good chance that you're just suffering from some of the coffee conducting in ways it shouldn't. So do the shutdown thing, pull the battery out, pull the hard drive out and any other removable anything that you can identify.

Take pictures of everything to make sure you know how to put it all back together. Pay attention to the type and length of screw that goes in each hole. Focus on finding where the coffee went, and if you know it didn't go to some part of the computer then don't mess with that part.

FWIW if that thing was made in the USA in the last 20 years, they almost certainly used water to wash the parts after they were manufactured. Water won't hurt anything as long as no electricity is involved. As well, water will certainly dissolve whatever was in your coffee, where alcohol might not. You already have water contamination, which is not so much of a problem. The real problem is sugar or cream or whatever.

If you can reasonably disassemble components such that you have ONLY a board, or ONLY a keyboard, etc then I would take whatever was hit with coffee and run some clean water through it, slowly. No high pressure, no soap, nothing. Do NOT do this to your speakers or microphone, and I would avoid your cd/dvd/floppy drives if they exist. Definitely avoid the battery, including the system clock battery. The hard drive is probably sealed, but I still shy away from hitting it with water. unless there is direct contamination.

Keyboards can be disassembled but it takes a lot of effort and a long time. Google your specific laptop, plus "keyboard disassembly" and they'll probably show your exact setup. You might try to just pour water through it, a BUNCH of water with lots of soaking time. Don't be surprised if tiny dead critters float out of there, keyboards get nasty. You will absolutely positively find dead skin and hair in large quantities.

Once you get everything clean, then lean it all up on an edge so water can drain. I like to gently shake the board so it can get the bigger parts out, and if I'm in a hurry I will get some canned air from OfficeMax or similar and blow the boards off. Especially the keyboard. DO NOT USE COMPRESSED AIR FROM A COMPRESSOR! That stuff is way too high pressure and it's full of rust and dirt and nasty water and oil. If your computer isn't toast now, it will be after you blow air from a compressor at it.

Everything everyone else said about being careful near pins for RAM etc is true. The blow dryer suggestions are interesting and nothing really wrong except you'd better hire a 14-year-old to hold that dryer for a few days IMO. If you do the full bath approach I'm talking about, you definitely want to leave it to dry for a few days. Not only that, but every half day or so pick the parts up, shake them and put them down rotated 90 degrees so the water that's pooled up can drain down further. Water tends to find its way under your processor and under any other type of chip, and if your heat sink grease didn't get full coverage you could be out of business for a long time.

[SemiExpert]

The first step is to attempt data recovery. Pull the hard drive and use a SATA cable or USB enclosure. As far as attempting to see in the motherboard is recoverable, I wish you the best of luck. Is it a waste of time? Probably. Something has shorted out. In the future consider a PC notebook that claims to have "spill resistant" keyboard. Some have a tray-like design that you turn upside down, and a few even have a drainhole on the base of the notebook.

[1clue]

The first step is to attempt data recovery. Pull the hard drive and use a SATA cable or USB enclosure. As far as attempting to see in the motherboard is recoverable, I wish you the best of luck. Is it a waste of time? Probably. Something has shorted out. In the future consider a PC notebook that claims to have "spill resistant" keyboard. Some have a tray-like design that you turn upside down, and a few even have a drainhole on the base of the notebook.

The $2500 laptop I'm using right now survived a soda spill in the keyboard and works just fine now using the techniques I outlined above.

If your laptop is something you consider to be junk and were about to replace anyway then consider data recovery first. If it's worth a bit of time to you, then the data recovery should be dead last on your list. Try to get the thing working as it was.

[mips]

Put it in a bag of rice. The rice will absorb the liquid faster and clean up easier.

You do realise that coffee is gonna turn into a substance not to different from tar?

[MasterNetra]

I once spilled pop on my laptop (keyboard area) I unplugged and removed the battery then rinsed it off under a facet, I let it dry over night, put the battery in the next day, plugged it in, and it was fine. Still is 2-3 years later.

[Paqman]

You do realise that coffee is gonna turn into a substance not to different from tar?

Probably not so much an issue of the coffee itself but the sugar in it. If the OP takes their coffee with plenty of sugar they could be in for a sticky mess.

[SemiExpert]

The $2500 laptop I'm using right now survived a soda spill in the keyboard and works just fine now using the techniques I outlined above.



Rinsing your motherboard with more water after it has probably been shorted out by the initial spill? Yikes! Assuming that a device wasn't powered on, or was powered down before something shorted out, it would be a matter of drying out the board and dealing with oxidization. I can even think of a couple of very good solvents for such an instance, but definitely not water. But in this case, it sounds like the OP definitely has something shorted out.


If your laptop is something you consider to be junk and were about to replace anyway then consider data recovery first. If it's worth a bit of time to you, then the data recovery should be dead last on your list. Try to get the thing working as it was.

Data recovery always comes first in my experience. First and foremost, you want your work preserved so you can continue working on another device. In any case, you don't need the hard drive when you're worrying about whether or not the motherboard is dead.

[1clue]

Rinsing your motherboard with more water after it has probably been shorted out by the initial spill? Yikes! Assuming that a device wasn't powered on, or was powered down before something shorted out, it would be a matter of drying out the board and dealing with oxidization. I can even think of a couple of very good solvents for such an instance, but definitely not water. But in this case, it sounds like the OP definitely has something shorted out.


Shorted? Yes. Melted/damaged beyond function? Probably not, unless you kept going and going and going until smoke comes out. Even dirty water doesn't generally conduct electricity better than copper does.

I hate to be the one who tells you this, but your computer's circuitry was probably washed with water in the factory after it was manufactured. Back when I was in college in the 1980's the electronics manufacturer I worked at switched over to water because it was more environmentally safe than what they were using. They switched to water soluble fluxes and all the other chemicals were changed too. The board is printed, covered with epoxy and the leads are gold plated. If you have corrosion issues you would have had them water or not.



Data recovery always comes first in my experience. First and foremost, you want your work preserved so you can continue working on another device. In any case, you don't need the hard drive when you're worrying about whether or not the motherboard is dead.

What about your backups? Oh wait, that's right you only do that AFTER the disaster right? Human nature! Source control? Never heard of it? Shucks.

Seriously, when my family tells me this sort of thing I get on them hard about backups. They know better than to whine now, and last I looked at my sister's computer there was actual evidence of regular backups.

Chances are your drive is fine. Software problems fry data, or lightning strikes. Water in the circuit just makes the circuit stop working or start working erratically. I've never seen a keyboard spill demolish data on a drive. The closest I've seen is the keyboard start "typing" by itself and mess up the document being edited.

[UltimateCat]

The member that recommended putting your laptop in a bag of rice is very smart.:p

My friend confirmed it as well....to do so-

Even if your hard drive is toast you can always purchase another one.
I realize they can be expensive.

Helpful websites of interest:

http://www.tigerdirect.com

http://www.newegg.com

Good Luck and best regards to you

[SemiExpert]

The member that recommended putting your laptop in a bag of rice is very smart.:p



Rice is the best and most readily available household desiccant. I've seen small paper packets of rice used in place of chemical desiccants, and anyone who's ever visited a Chinese restaurant has probably noticed a few grains of rice at the bottom of the sugar shaker. However, desiccants are most useful when used immediately after a spill, and it's probably more realistic to bury an iPod in rice than a notebook computer - although some people the United States do buy rice in 50 or 100lb bags

[1clue]

If it were just water I could totally agree with the rice. The problem is it's not just water, it's coffee with some unknown combination of sweeteners and possibly dairy products in it. Once the sugar crystalizes it will make the keys sticky, and possibly cause other problems elsewhere in the computer.

As I understand desiccants (which is not very much) you need to enclose the device being dried out with some reasonable amount of desiccant, in a bag or something. No need to bury it in rice, I would think that a pound would dry out any reasonable amount of water.

[SemiExpert]

Shorted? Yes. Melted/damaged beyond function? Probably not, unless you kept going and going and going until smoke comes out. Even dirty water doesn't generally conduct electricity better than copper does.



I know that there are people out there who are probably able to repair a motherboard, but they are few and far between. The OP apparently "kept going and going and going" after the spill until the notebook was dead, so I think that it isn't probably a simple matter.



I hate to be the one who tells you this, but your computer's circuitry was probably washed with water in the factory after it was manufactured. Back when I was in college in the 1980's the electronics manufacturer I worked at switched over to water because it was more environmentally safe than what they were using. They switched to water soluble fluxes and all the other chemicals were changed too. The board is printed, covered with epoxy and the leads are gold plated. If you have corrosion issues you would have had them water or not.




I can assure you that manufactures don't energize the boards while rinsing them, and that any water used is distilled or deionized. Moreover, when attempting to clean a board when it's been subjected to water damage, and I'm guessing you know as well as I do that water isn't the best solvent.





What about your backups? Oh wait, that's right you only do that AFTER the disaster right? Human nature! Source control? Never heard of it? Shucks.

Seriously, when my family tells me this sort of thing I get on them hard about backups. They know better than to whine now, and last I looked at my sister's computer there was actual evidence of regular backups.

Chances are your drive is fine. Software problems fry data, or lightning strikes. Water in the circuit just makes the circuit stop working or start working erratically. I've never seen a keyboard spill demolish data on a drive. The closest I've seen is the keyboard start "typing" by itself and mess up the document being edited.

I'll agree that the hard drive is the least likely component to be damaged, but there again, data loss can be a lot more expensive than mere hardware damage. We all should have home servers and multiple cloud backups. We also shouldn't avoid drinking beverages in the vicinity of notebook computers, but most of us do anyway.

[1clue]

I know that there are people out there who are probably able to repair a motherboard, but they are few and far between. The OP apparently "kept going and going and going" after the spill until the notebook was dead, so I think that it isn't probably a simple matter.


I can't repair a motherboard unless there's some visible damage I can repair with a soldering iron. I'm not talking about that. Laptops are running at low voltage. Probably 12v or less, certainly less than 24v. You're not talking about dumping water on wall current. Sparks don't fly out like on a movie set. Chances are that whatever started behaving badly will work fine once everything is cleaned up.

Water, even coffee, is less of an electrical disaster than many people think. You can drop a high performance brushless motor in a glass of water and run it, no seals, no special treatment. That can be on the order of 50v and probably significantly more current than a laptop uses. The exposed iron will rust eventually if you keep doing that, and the bearings might need attention, but it works. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzbOqUQdAco For that matter, some industrial electric submerged motors are pretty much indistinguishable from their open-air equivalents except in attention to bearings. If it's a closed water circuit for cooling they generally add rust inhibitors but don't bother with dielectric coolants because the water just doesn't conduct that well. Before you go off on that, yes water conducts enough to kill you. But not necessarily enough to kill an electronic device, especially when exposed for a relatively short time.

When you get water in a low voltage digital device, chances are the malfunction is that the water conducts enough current to flip one pin the wrong way and cause an error in function. That doesn't mean the smoke comes out. The smoke might come out if you keep using it, but if you power it down and dry it out it will probably work fine, except that the sugar and biological components (milk/cream/etc) might make things sticky. That's certainly all that happened in my case.



I can assure you that manufactures don't energize the boards while rinsing them, and that any water used is distilled or deionized. Moreover, when attempting to clean a board when it's been subjected to water damage, and I'm guessing you know as well as I do that water isn't the best solvent.


I agree that they don't energize the boards when they're wet. I agree that distilled or deionized water is better, but unless you have some really bad water I doubt that you're going to leave so many mineral deposits that it will be worse than having coffee with sugar and creamer all over. That, and distilled water is as cheap as any drinking water you can buy in the store. Use that if you want.

Water isn't the best solvent if you're talking about its ability as a solvent, but as of when I was working in the electronics manufacturing field it was the one that was chosen by at least one factory. Which means it's far from the worst choice.



I'll agree that the hard drive is the least likely component to be damaged, but there again, data loss can be a lot more expensive than mere hardware damage. We all should have home servers and multiple cloud backups. We also shouldn't avoid drinking beverages in the vicinity of notebook computers, but most of us do anyway.

Gee, I don't have a home server OR a cloud backup. I just have rational backups regularly. Believe it or not, they're about as low-tech as you can get. I plug in a SATA drive into an external slot as though it were a tape cartridge, drag my data over with my mouse and then unmount the drive and remove it. Proof against anything but a fire, and since my email and contacts and most of my photos and all my music are on my phone as well that means just about everything I care a lot about leaves the house with me.


Dude, you're making more out of this than it probably is. All I'm saying is that what happened here is probably not a permanently damaged system. He kept using the thing until it started acting funny, and then shut down. That's more consistent with water flipping some bits than it is with burned circuits. I've done this before, and recently.

[Stovey]

Hi everyone. I would like to extend a sincere thanks for everybody's help and interesting discussion.

After looking at the service manual I decided not to disassemble the laptop. Not that I was intimidated; rather, it looked like alot of work, and I'd rather be doing something else. So I paid a guy $50 to disassemble and clean my laptop. He said that he used some kind of solvent or contact cleaner and then let it dry.

The good news is that it now starts and seems to behave almost normal. The bad news is that the "t" doesn't really work. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't and sometimes it sticks (and makes "t"'s repeatedly).

Is there anything I can do about the 't'? Is the problem with a circuit, or do I just need to clean the back of the keyboard better? If the "t" doesn't work, the laptop is of no use to me.

The funny news is that it really stinks like coffee! I drink black coffee - no cream, no sugar.

[mraandtux]

Backup your data, find a repair centre, if can't fix then buy a new one or DIY a desktop PC. Then reinstall any system you like.
By the way: The "coffee"(Actually forum credits) seens like spoiled out from the screen!

[winh8r]

A little ironic that the coffee messed up the "t"!

Sounds like it just need a good clean up around the key area. Even without cream and sugar, coffee dries into an almost glue like substance and seems to stay sticky forever.

probably a much better idea to just clean it carefully.

Glad to hear you got it up and running again though.

[SemiExpert]

Is there anything I can do about the 't'? Is the problem with a circuit, or do I just need to clean the back of the keyboard better? If the "t" doesn't work, the laptop is of no use to me.



Keyboards are cheap enough to replace: http://www.amazon.com/Genuine-Acer-Replacement-Keyboard-KB-I110A-026/dp/B003VYTARQ

[1clue]

Google your laptop model and "keyboard key popped off" and there will be somebody who has made a page about getting keys on and off again. Or YouTube it.

For as simple as a key is, there seem to be dozens of variations on how they're made. Most are pretty similar, but it helps to know which way they oriented the mechanical parts.

The parts are usually plastic and possibly some wire, but they're fragile and tiny. You'll want a super-tiny flat screwdriver to try to get under there and pop the pins out of the holes.

Then you can go clean and dry under your T key, and re-assemble.

In my experience a keyboard that has something sticky in it will NOT improve much over time. The sticky eventually becomes crunchy.

If your T key is actually broken (I think this is extremely unlikely) then you can either hook up a USB keyboard or you can replace the original.

Good luck and have fun.

[winh8r]

In my experience a keyboard that has something sticky in it will NOT improve much over time. The sticky eventually becomes crunchy.


Good point.

Taken.