Keep your juice away from your laptop (help :/)

[kcnychief]

Grandmaster, you've got PM

 

[mlakrid]

Yeah guys I think the CPU and other stuff in there are dead. I put it back together this morning.

I smiled as I heard the fan and hard drive startup, the LEDs blinking brightly.

Then it went quiet. Its stays powered but I don't think it's getting a response from the CPU so it's like a vegetable.

Murphy's Law is a ****ing bitch. Just my luck that I **** up my laptop the night before a big project is due.

I was up all night re-doing a bunch of ****. 6 more hours at school, then I'll collapse in bed. Then I'll do a final thorough clean up with the complete dissasembly and hope that I can salvage something through the warranty.

Just a note, most components are very hardy with their built in saftey measures now. If you hear no noise, that COULD be a bad sign, but not neccessarily so.

I wish you luck! Keep us posted...

 

[Dublex]

Can you plug the HD into something else and save any documents from there at least?

Ouch on the situation, I hope you manage to make up the work and remember others are here to offer support. Reminds me of when my old PC's Powersupply decided to go on the fritz and wipe all the data of my HD sporodically when I was at uni.

 

[Grandmaster]

Well I managed to get the work done so no point in trying to get files off of it.

I don't think I've stayed awake this long, ever though

 

[kcnychief]

you had it backed up on the NAS anyways, right?

 

[Grandmaster]

I did bi-weekly backups of music, pictures, other media, and documents.

The stuff I needed was not on the last backup, unfortunately.

 

[Dublex]

Risk of danger / Damoclese's sword hanging over you tend to make you stay up longer

 

[Moonwraith]

If the oven idea's a bit crazy, leave it under your pillow for the night, or the Airing Cupboard is where i left my phone when i did the same thing as Tittles ^^

Water fights/pools + phone = baaad.

Hope things work dude

 

[Tittles]

If the oven idea's a bit crazy, leave it under your pillow for the night, or the Airing Cupboard is where i left my phone when i did the same thing as Tittles ^^

Water fights/pools + phone = baaad.

Hope things work dude

My buddy dropped his in the creek when I got stuck in it when we went two trackin over the summer. Then mine fell in the snow trying to push a buddy out of the ditch.

 

[LeeJend]

If the keyboard LED's flashed then the CPU, bios and power supply are ok. Most likely some OJ residue is under a part and the acid makes it slightly conductive. That's why you need to flush the electronics really well with alcohol ($1 a bottle at any pharmacy or supermarket). The sugar makes things even harder. It will seal up the tiny holes that let the OJ under the parts.

In the old days, before ozone depletion, we used cans of compressed freon degreaser (formerly available at radio shack). It acted as a pressure washer for electronics. Now days it's alcohol and a soft brush, which doesn't work for ****. ( I know because part of last night I was using it to scrub carbon scoring off of parts up to 5 feet away from my "event".) Shame I can't take pictures. Holes vaporized through 1/4 inch aluminum plate is really impressive.


PS You take a 10 year old 15 kW electronic power distribution center. Subject it to 10 lifetimes worth of 400 amp short circuit over a 6 month period and then forget to give it a 5 minute cool down between 2 more short circuits.

 

[Sazar]

Call dell and tell em your computers dead and see if they replace it

Try not to let slip that you, ahem, spilt da love juize all over it

 

[LeeJend]

Hmmm, he has a point there. Once all the visible signs are cleaned off, who's to know. As long as there are no globs of dried juice, sticky keys, etc.

 

[NetRyder]

Heh yeah...that's basically what I suggested to Omar on MSNM the other day.

 

[Grandmaster]

Okay, things are looking up.

I was in no shape after I came home yesterday to do anything with it. But today the first thing I did was call up Dell. After waiting an hour on hold, I was able to get ahold of a customer service dude that knew what he was talking about.

He was able to help me get the laptop to function by pressing Fn+Power button which started the diagnostic boot. The diagnostics said there was some problems with the LCD.

After this little diagnostic I was able to boot it up completely into windows. Wonderful. Now I decided to put the battery back in (which was removed for diagnostics), and again it doesn't boot up.

The Dell guy said that there was a problem with the LCD and he would send a guy in to replace it within the next 2-3 days. He's also going to send in a replacement battery after I asked him to because it the laptop boots up when the battery is NOT inserted.

After that I did a complete dissassembly. Then I realized maybe the Dell dude was right because most of the juice stains were around the cable that connects the LCD to the rest of the system.

The juice was extremely close to the CPU itself...in fact there were some stains right on the edges of the heatsink So a bit of juice just leaked to the top of the heatsink. Nothing leads me to believe that the juice went onto any part of the system board or the CPU itself.

And I didn't tell the Dell dude about anything relating to the juice.

So the plan is to carry out a the stain removal with the alcohol recommended, before the techician arrives in 2-3 business days.

Overall the situation is A LOT better than I thought it was. I haven't tried to boot the system up again without the battery as I didn't want to subject it to anymore stress through the juice. So hurrah!

LeeJend: When you mean flush you mean I should pour the alcohol all over the board?

 

[NetRyder]

Good luck! Looks like it'll work out then.
2-3 days at-home service. Very nice.

 

[Perris Calderon]

I'm hoping he replaces the whole thing, even if you get it going, damage can accumilate

 

[Sazar]

It's NBD == next business day == usually a day or two after the day you are calling depending on the time

The best support is offered to the customers that I deal with, federal government and corporations

 

[Grandmaster]

Yeah I'm still slightly worried at why it doesn't boot up with the battery, and maybe they will replace the whole thing.

But I'm not too concerned about how well this behave long term after seeing the extent of the spillage.

 

[Sazar]

It could be some damage to a contact.

I wouldn't worry about it.

Just wait and see what happens when the guy comes over.

It's free so if it still doesn't work right, call and get some more info.

The batteries are a lot cheaper to replace than a notebook lol.

 

[Grandmaster]

LeeJend: When you mean flush you mean I should pour the alcohol all over the board?