What do I do if I spill liquid (coffee, water, soda, whatever) on my laptop?
That’s a common question we get. Sadly, it’s usually after the fact. About 60% of laptops that have suffered something being spilled in them can be kept working if the proper steps are followed. Here’s a list of “DOs” and “DON’Ts” that may salvage your laptop.
THINGS NOT TO DO:
- Do NOT try to dry off your laptop with a blow dryer (we’ve seen a lot of people try this for water spills). You’ll melt your keys, and possibly damage other components as well.
- Do NOT turn your laptop on it’s side (especially the front side).
- Do NOT put your laptop in it’s laptop bag/case.
- Do NOT rinse out or rinse off your laptop (we’ve seen this happen for non-water spills such as soda spills).
- Do NOT put your laptop in the oven, in front of a heater or anywhere else like that to dry.
- Do NOT keep using your laptop.
THINGS TO DO:
- Unplug your laptop IMMEDIATELY.
- Pull the battery out of your laptop IMMEDIATELY. If possible, keep the laptop flat when you do this (ie: don’t turn it over or on it’s side if at all possible).
“Won’t I lose what I am working on?”- Yes – but NOT doing #1 & #2 immediately may mean you lose your whole laptop and possibly all your data.
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- Leave your laptop in the same orientation it was in when you spilled liquid in it.
- Immediately take it to a repair shop you trust – in the same orientation it was in when you spilled liquid in it.
- Now… the really important one…
When you get to the repair shop, be 100% honest with the technician.
Tell him what you spilled in it, when you spilled it, how long the machine was still on after the spill occurred, and where the liquid went into the laptop. This will increase your chances of the laptop being able to be repaired/cleaned with little to no replacement parts needed:- The technician will know what they need to be cleaning off the components (and what to use to clean it off) – instead of guessing.
- The technician will know what directions they can move/flip the laptop to try to avoid getting your hard drive wet (did you know most every hard drive has a venting hole/slot someplace? getting liquid in the hole can help ensure you LOSE your data).
- The technician will know what special care is needed to disassemble the laptop. For instance, a laptop is pretty easy to take apart when it’s a water spill. If you spill soda (or coffee with lots of sugar) in the laptop though, it becomes more difficult as the soda/coffee dry, and special care needs to be taken to disassemble the laptop without breaking or stressing a component.
Don’t expect miracles, you aren’t guaranteed your laptop will ever work again – even if it was working when you pulled the power and battery. But following the steps above will help increase your chance of having a laptop that will keep working.
I spilled whiskey and water on my lap top while it was running. I immediately unplugged it and cleaned it as best I could from the outside. set it up and closed the bath door and ran the hairdryer in there for a while. Then I put it in a bag with rice. At first it powered on, then it started a high pitch beeping noise. This morning it will not power on. Should I take it a part and try to clean it, or is it permanently fried? Is any of the hard drive recoverable?
The hard drive is likely recoverable. Unfortunately, with things such as alcohol or soda (each for similar as well as different reasons), the best way of dealing with such a spill requires disassembling the machine to fully clean it – and in the case of a laptop, that’s not something I would recommend for the average user.
With luck, the issue that persists is memory related. It is of course possible it is CPU or motherboard related. I’d take it to a qualified repair shop so they can diagnose it – or look up the error beeps (hopefully, that is what you are hearing). If it turns out the beeps are indicative of failed memory, have it cleaned inside and out, and the memory replaced. If it is the motherboard, the repair *MIGHT* be worth it, or might be way too expensive to be worthwhile. That will be dependent on the cost of the replacement motherboard. Sometimes they are pretty cheap – sometimes they can run higher than the price of a new system.
Your hard drive, unless the alcohol pooled onto or around it, is likely functional (at least sufficiently functional enough to retrieve your data). But, unbeknownst to most, hard drives have venting holes. Those holes are filtered to prevent physical debris from getting in them (ie: dust and such) but are not designed to keep liquids out (otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to let air in or out). So, if the drive got covered in a liquid near those vents, or the liquid pooled around the drive (and covered the vents), then the chances of reading the drive decreases drastically.
Pulling the drive out (pretty easy task – you can find instructions online for your model) will give you an idea of whether or not the drive got covered in alcohol. You can buy an empty external enclosure to put the drive in, so you can then use it as an external drive and access your data.