Need tech-y help - spilled beer on laptop...

[Nataly 38]

Ok, so I did the obvious thing... Shut it down and riinsed with water and let it dry 48 hours and even put it back together without any parts being left over...

Nothing was lost; it starts and shuts just fine, just that some keys no longer work...

Can I just replace the keyboard or is it something else that is fried???

"There is no problem so bad you can't make it worse."
- Chris Hadfield
« Sors le martinet et flagelle toi indigne contrôleuse de gestion. »
- my boss

[ryoder 1,590]

What kind of beer?

"There are only three things of value: younger women, faster airplanes, and bigger crocodiles" - Arthur Jones.

[shropshire 0]

See, there's your problem ... no bits left over to appease the hardware gods.

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[Nataly 38]

Quote

See, there's your problem ... no bits left over to appease the hardware gods.

Fuck... I already sacrificed beer, isn't that enough???

"There is no problem so bad you can't make it worse."
- Chris Hadfield
« Sors le martinet et flagelle toi indigne contrôleuse de gestion. »
- my boss

[shropshire 0]

sorry pet ........... Accidents != sacrifice (that's the law)

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[Nataly 38]

Quote

sorry pet ........... Accidents != sacrifice (that's the law)

D'oh.

Thinking of getting another (used) one on e-bay for parts. Unless someone has a better idea.

"There is no problem so bad you can't make it worse."
- Chris Hadfield
« Sors le martinet et flagelle toi indigne contrôleuse de gestion. »
- my boss

[lurch 0]

Nothing will have fried outright: Problem is dried beer on contact pads. Very deep inside keyboard structure: have to disassemble keyboard to individual pieces to clean effectively.
Your motherboard and hard drives seem to have survived or it would not boot: but you must not get any more water in it.
To have any chance of fixing this you've got to remove the keyboard from the laptop. The laptop itself will not survive immersion, nor would most of its parts such as screen, internal power supply, motherboard, and especially hard drives. But just the keyboard subassembly if you can get all the delicate electronics off of it may survive a thorough dunking if the water is pure.

If you can open laptop and remove keyboard, I would suggest thoroughly rinsing keyboard, (preferably in a few gallons of distilled water, best you can do, electronics industry uses deionized water, not the sort of thing found in average kitchen).

Thoroughly dry, preferably in very warm place. To really do it right you should bake the moisture out of it, controlled environment bake at about 120 degrees. At home as a kid, lacking a lab oven I'd do it by hanging it a few feet above a high wattage light bulb or baking it in a towel on top of a big TV back when all TVs were huge and emitted major heat. To avoid damaging it by heat, make sure it gets good and hot but not too hot to handle in your bare hands. Much hotter and you risk melting something.

Reassemble.

This MAY save it.

It also may finish destroying it, but the keyboard unit itself is almost certainly totalled anyway. Since its already ruined, got nothing to lose by trying. If you can't buy a new keyboard for that laptop you're probably out of luck.
Other potential problem is, beer may have actually destroyed some flexboard. Older technology was more tolerant but I recently was given a coke-soaked keyboard as an if-you-can-save-it gift and it turned out to be unsaveable-the acids in the coca cola actually etched the traces clean off the transparent plastic flexboard the keyboard used as a core. If that same technology and trace chemistry is in use in that laptop, the beer may have done the same. I'd try the pure water rinse myself, but be ready to order a new keyboard and assume probable failure. Modern electronics just aren't as fixable as they used to be.
-B

Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

[Nataly 38]

Like I said... I took the whole damned thing apart... Rinsed everything aside from the hard drive, the fan, and everything that was obviously not wet. Soaked the keyboard thoroughly. Put everything on a tray in the sunshine to air-dry for 48 hours.

No data was lost. Everything works like a charm apart from about 6 keys. Even after taking those keys apart and cleaning them (a fucking nightmare with those stupid little clippy-things that laptops have)... But the same 6 keys still don't work...

So on ebay there are some going for about 30 euros... Hoping just changing the keyboard will do the trick 'cause cleaning it didn't quite salvage it...

"There is no problem so bad you can't make it worse."
- Chris Hadfield
« Sors le martinet et flagelle toi indigne contrôleuse de gestion. »
- my boss

[oldwomanc6 42]

So how ya talking to us?

lisa
WSCR 594
FB 1023
CBDB 9

[Nataly 38]

Quote

So how ya talking to us?

Blackberry

"There is no problem so bad you can't make it worse."
- Chris Hadfield
« Sors le martinet et flagelle toi indigne contrôleuse de gestion. »
- my boss

[oldwomanc6 42]

Quote

Quote

So how ya talking to us?

Blackberry

lisa
WSCR 594
FB 1023
CBDB 9

[skydveraz 0]

Get some tuner cleaner for tv sets. They sell it at rado
shack or electronics stores. Use it only on the keyboard.
It is for cleaning electronic contacts. Make sure it is safe for plastics!!! You can also get a usb keyboard and just plug it in to the computer and use it that way if everything else is ok.

What ever you do, Do NOT buy electrical contact cleaner..
It will destoy the keyboard!

Arizona only has two seasons, Hot and HOTTER!