Water damaged Dell XPS M1330

Hi folks,

A year or more ago my nephew spilled the best part of a pint of water over my M1330. Instead of immediately shutting it down he just closed the lid, panicked and ran away. Despite my best efforts to dry it out over a period of several weeks — using rice, a hair dryer, leaving it in a hot press, and so on — the laptop remained dead. I've decided I want to fix it.

The laptop simply doesn't turn on so I suspect the PSU might be fried, and probably the motherboard too. I was looking at this on ebay and wondering if it might do the trick. I would be competent enough to fit it myself. My query is, what's the likelihood that this would fix the laptop? The HDD seems to be fine, I assume the RAM is okay and I'm hoping the CPU is unharmed. Am I wasting money or is it worth a shot? Am I possibly overlooking anything?

Alternatively, is there a reliable computer store in either Galway or Dublin that would give me an estimate of the cost of repair and then attempt to fix it? Or would I be better of doing it myself?

If you need to know anything else please let me know.

The strangest thing...

After 6 months the laptop wouldn't turn on. It was completely dead.

After 12 months it wouldn't turn on. It was as dead as before.

Now, almost 18 months later, it just turned on. It powered up perfectly. That's incredibly unusual.

Calibos

Literally the same thing happened to my Vostro 1700 about 3 years ago and the other day respectively. Don't know if it was a spillage that no one had the balls to own up to and tell me about or if it was something else entirely. Attempts at diagnosis every 9 months or so or whenever I happened to come across it again at the bottom of the wardrobe when rooting around for something else. I'd google around again and dismantle the laptop again etc

5th or 6th times a charm though! pressed the power button the other day and it came back to life!!

Here's my thread about it

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057040151

Going to upgrade the CPU from the 2ghz T5*** merom 65nm to a 2.5ghz T9300 Penryn 45nm which should give a noticeable performance boost and better battery life and cooler running. Also going to put back in the 250gig HDD I salvaged from it years ago and a 60gig SSD. Will make a great browsing and XBMC media playing machine.

Tomk1

It can take a while to dry out. leaving on window in the sun with airflow or maybe airing cupboard for a few days/week should get rid of water. Circuit boards are washed with water after solder refloat, then dryed. The prod with water damage is lifting dirt and conductive material then depositing where it can cause shots, opening the laptaop or other device and wiping the circuit board with a nylon paint brush or better an unused toothbush will remove deposits, using a cleaning agent helps such as industrial achohol, but as not usually at hand I have used of all things aftershave, does the job as it evaporates and contains achohol. (aside I've used aftershave to clean printer-heads but boiling water is better)

Anyway just cleaning the board with a toothbrush should be enough, only fixed one last week. wouldn't turn on after being dried, cleaned the circuit board, reassenbled and away it went.

Maybe the board wasn't fully dried, but after year it should of been well dried, maybe I guess repeated turn ons caused the loose shot circuits to burn up, ie current through the resistence of the shorts heating up and burning the short away. It amazes how tough IC's can be.

Water damage is not the end as said it's used in the production processs, but if not dried out fully turning it on is a bad idea. Water is not conductive but its the residue particles that can be.

Anyway great to hear but after a few years maybe could do with an upgrade of Memory, easy to do.

edit: I fixed a car ECU with longterm water damage by same method, but had to replace a burnt out cap. saved a friend a lot of money.

sanders

Hi there,

I spilt quite a lot of water on my bed (about 150-200ml) with my laptop right next to the spill. I didn't realise it had spilt at first as it was from a faulty cap on a lucozade bottle! Anyway the water seemed to have soaked my dell xps m1330, I thought it was just on the case so I cleaned it off with a bit of tissue, but a few hours later the laptop wouldn't turn on. All that time the battery was left in as well as the mains charger, and I tried to power it up before I'd realised the water had gone inside the laptop.

I've taken out the battery and the hard drive which had a few dots of water on it. Taken off the back casing and tried to dry it out as much as possible. Its now on the windowsill and will be drying there for the next 2 days. I don't care about the laptop I just want to make sure that my hard drive and data isn't lost because I have lots of important stuff on there. If anyone can give me any advice, I'd really appreciate it and would be grateful for any reply.

Thank you!

duckysauce

sanders wrote: »

Hi there,

I spilt quite a lot of water on my bed (about 150-200ml) with my laptop right next to the spill. I didn't realise it had spilt at first as it was from a faulty cap on a lucozade bottle! Anyway the water seemed to have soaked my dell xps m1330, I thought it was just on the case so I cleaned it off with a bit of tissue, but a few hours later the laptop wouldn't turn on. All that time the battery was left in as well as the mains charger, and I tried to power it up before I'd realised the water had gone inside the laptop.

I've taken out the battery and the hard drive which had a few dots of water on it. Taken off the back casing and tried to dry it out as much as possible. Its now on the windowsill and will be drying there for the next 2 days. I don't care about the laptop I just want to make sure that my hard drive and data isn't lost because I have lots of important stuff on there. If anyone can give me any advice, I'd really appreciate it and would be grateful for any reply.

Thank you!

Hard drive should be fine , it's the board on the laptop that will be the problem. Let the hard drive fully dry out , then connect with an external usb-sata cable to another machine and see how is is.

mordeith

sanders wrote: »

Hi there,

I've taken out the battery and the hard drive which had a few dots of water on it. Taken off the back casing and tried to dry it out as much as possible. Its now on the windowsill and will be drying there for the next 2 days. I don't care about the laptop I just want to make sure that my hard drive and data isn't lost because I have lots of important stuff on there. If anyone can give me any advice, I'd really appreciate it and would be grateful for any reply.

Thank you!

The first thing I'd do is try and get hold of a 2.5" caddy for the HD and try it on another laptop / pc to check if it is still okay. I reckon that would be safter than waiting to test it in the current laptop.

sanders

duckysauce wrote: »

Hard drive should be fine , it's the board on the laptop that will be the problem. Let the hard drive fully dry out , then connect with an external usb-sata cable to another machine and see how is is.

Thanks for the reply. I've put the hard drive in a box of rice to draw out the moisture, how long should I leave it in there for? Would it be worth taking it to a repair shop and letting them test out the hard drive? Thanks again

mordeith

sanders wrote: »

Thanks for the reply. I've put the hard drive in a box of rice to draw out the moisture, how long should I leave it in there for? Would it be worth taking it to a repair shop and letting them test out the hard drive? Thanks again

I wouldn't bother with a repair shop unless they're willing to stick in in a cady and test it for a nominal fee.

sanders

mordeith wrote: »

I wouldn't bother with a repair shop unless they're willing to stick in in a cady and test it for a nominal fee.

Just took it to my local repair shop who have amazing reviews. The guy tested it and confirmed the hard drive's working fine, all fines etc are on there. He tested it for free too. What a relief! He suggested waiting 3 days for the laptop to dry then taking it apart, cleaning it and then testing. I need to back up stuff from my hard drive to an external HD or another laptop, how do I go about doing this now? I haven't got a hard drive reader..

sanders

Backed up my hard drive data using a caddy. Disassembled the laptop after 3 days, cleaned thoroughly and dried it out.. When reassembled it still didn't turn on. I read above that this can be helped by cleaning with aftershave or alcohol, and cleaning off any residue with a new toothbrush, is this correct? Thanks.