[plug] Fluid damage to Laptop

[Jonathan Young]

Hi All

This week I am looking at a laptop which has been potentially damaged by
fluid ingression.  In other words, a glass of red wine was spilt next to
it and a fair amount managed to land on the keyboard, the upward facing
left speaker and the remainder washed around the based of the laptop
where it sat on the desk before anyone could react.  It is a Toshiba
laptop and won't be cheap to replace.

On the plus side, the laptop was immediately unplugged, switched off
(power button held down for 10 seconds), the battery and hard drive
removed (all data is safe and sound) and nothing went "pop - bang" at
the time.  In fact, it continued to play the music/video it was
processing during the ordeal and the screen showed everything normal
until it was forced to turn off.

On the down side, wine literally poured back out of it (mainly from the
speaker) and it was nearly a full 300ml that went "missing" and then
came back out.

On the plus side, after it was manually cleaned as much as possible, it
was tipped upside down with paper towel between the screen and keyboard
and has been that way (on a slight angle) for 24 hours ++.  Not a drop
has appeared on the paper towel during that time.  The design of the
base of the laptop also meant that four rubber feet kept it raised off
the table by around 2mm - just enough to keep the wine off the base. 
For example, none of the stickers or labels are even remotely stained. 
The CD-RW drive which is immediately behind the speaker was spotless
which implies a separate cavity for the speaker cone inside the chasis.

So......

Is it worth pulling it apart to see what the insides look like and/or to
do further cleaning?

How long should it be left to dry before being powered back up for a test
run?

If it boots, what tests can be done before putting the hard drive back in
to ensure it won't short out and damage the drive for instance?

If it boots, what will it take before it can be trusted again - can it be
left switched on when no-one is home?

If it appears to have survived, what can some evaporated wine crystals or
residue do to the insides of a laptop that might cause it to die
prematurely in the coming months?

And lastly, what do pluggers think of people eating and drinking around
their computers, especially laptops where the risk is more than just a
$10 replacement keyboard?

All suggestions, personal experiences and especially technical facts
would be appreciated.  I'd really like to save this one, though the
temptation is to hit the button now and see what happens...!


Jonathan Young
Director of PC-PHIX
jonathan at pcphix.com

Phone: 0410 455 674
Web:  www.pcphix.com