Laptop Had A Shower

Captain_Generic

So my laptop got soaked today. Had it in a waterproof bag along with a bottle of water. Bottle got knocked open while I was on the bus, created a pool in the bag and completely soaked my laptop to the point where water was streaming out of the case when I took it out.

Took the battery out instantly (did not try and turn it on obviously), removed everything I could when I got home (ram, hdd), and dried any visible water. Two bags of rice later everythings sitting in the hot press for the next 24 hours.

So what's the chance this story will have a happy ending? Or am I fooked?

weeder

should be ok if it was just plain water, leave it for a good week. 2 to be on the safe side.

Captain_Generic

weeder wrote: »

should be ok if it was just plain water, leave it for a good week. 2 to be on the safe side.

I would but I need to present a final year project on it on Friday. I need a fairly high-end laptop for it and none of my friends has on which is suitable. I could always lug in my PC but I'll see how its looking tomorrow.

There's visible water behind the LCD screen which I'll be using to gauge overall dryness

BostonB

Pot luck to be honest.

BostonB

Captain_Generic wrote: »

...
There's visible water behind the LCD screen which I'll be using to gauge overall dryness

Thats not good.

subway

water can cause a short but it can also cause corrosion.
if it was me, i would completely disassemble it and get silica crystals on everything to remove moisture immediately.

i wouldnt turn it on for a while, if its important and you have no backup (!) get the hard drive out and, silica, then plug it into something else (cheap) and hope for the best.

the above advice may be fully retarded, as i would tend to jump straight in and **** things more up.

your best bet would be to get a loan of a good laptop for a few days and use the backup that you surely have made.

Einstein

normal electronics once dried off from plain water should be fine.

cant help ya on the LCD screen health though!

Captain_Generic

BostonB wrote: »

Thats not good.

From what i've read the screen could be permanently damaged colour-wise, but if I can generally see what I'm doing thats alright until I can get a replacement screen

ricman

best to open up the bezel,take out screen ,dry it with a soft cloth, try and drain all water out, open ,cover lift up keyboard, drain all the water out.leave up side down ,for 1 hour to drain the water, you could use a hairdryer to dry the mobo,any water on the mobo, underneath the motherboard will cause a short when you turn it on.Leave it near a radiator turn on radiator , full for a few hours, leave for 24 hours to dry out.theres no way of drying it properly without opening the covers,lift keyboard, examine mobo,leave standing ,vertically, let water drain out, for a while.What model,is it? i might have a spare screen.post model, eg sony 510dl

Captain_Generic

Right just booted it up there. Tested the RAM and HDD separately first, no problems there. Seems to boot fine, screen is pretty wrecked, still perfectly usable but the colours are a mess.
The speakers seem to be screwed as well, the whole time I was in windows it they just made random interference static noises. This was kinda worrying since there could definitely still be moisture somewhere. Plugging into the audio jack switches off the speakers so that much still works.

Its back in the hot-press again for at least the next 12 hours just in case.
And ricman its a Dell XPS M1530.

Overheal

next time you boot get your priority files to a flash drive as quickly as you can, dont lose your work

Captain_Generic

Mods might not appreciate me dragging up an old thread, but if anyone is interested my laptop works perfectly again. Took almost two weeks for all the water to evaporate from behind the screen but most of it was gone after 5 or 6 days. So if it happens to someone else the order I did things in seems to work pretty well

Calraigh B

Nice! Good to know- I'd imagine something like this will befall me at some point in the future

Vic_08

Captain_Generic wrote: »

Mods might not appreciate me dragging up an old thread, but if anyone is interested my laptop works perfectly again. Took almost two weeks for all the water to evaporate from behind the screen but most of it was gone after 5 or 6 days. So if it happens to someone else the order I did things in seems to work pretty well

Sounds more like a large dose of luck than anything else. Turning it on less than 24 hours after it got dunked long before it was fully dried out was not the smartest thing to do, you were very lucky nothing shorted.

I am glad it worked out for you on that occasion but I wouldn't advise anyone else to do similar.

Captain_Generic

Vic_08 wrote: »

Sounds more like a large dose of luck than anything else. Turning it on less than 24 hours after it got dunked long before it was fully dried out was not the smartest thing to do, you were very lucky nothing shorted.

I am glad it worked out for you on that occasion but I wouldn't advise anyone else to do similar.

Thats true, the presentation situation gave me no choice in that regard. Otherwise I would have left it for as long as was practically possible.