[plug] Fluid damage to Laptop

[Shannon Carver]

I can't really add anything to the conversation, I just thought I'd say that
this weekend gone must have been a bad one for laptops or something.  My
girlfriend knocked over a glass of red wine on Saturday night, proceeding to
spill red wine all over my old Compaq Armada on Saturday night.

I was annoyed at first, then remembered just how much of a beating I've
given it over the years and laughed.

Cleaned it out Sunday morning, and it works fine, might have been lucky this
time, there was dried sticky red wine all over the CPU heatsink, didn't
touch anything too important though, I don't think!



> -----Original Message-----
> From: plug-bounces at plug.org.au [mailto:plug-bounces at plug.org.au] On Behalf
> Of Jonathan Young
> Sent: Monday, 11 September 2006 8:52 AM
> To: plug at plug.org.au; plug at plug.org.au
> Subject: [plug] Fluid damage to Laptop
> 
> 
> 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
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