Chances of a Laptop Recovering from Water Spill?

maxseven said:

PlasticTopHat said:

I'll probably try booting it up this evening.

Totally depends on your environment as to whether it's advisable to try quite so soon. If it's winter-dry RH, and you have fans and maybe a low-wattage heater on the thing, it could dry-out that quickly I suppose. Anyway be darn sure cuz any leftover water could cause the short-circuit that you don't want!

If it were mine I'd probably take the back off (as if you were replacing HDD or RAM or ???) and see if any wetness appears anywhere at all.

I sorta doubt the HDD has been killed--those things have a single hole which is tightly filtered on the inside such that IMO it'd have to be sitting in water before it got wet. Also the drives I've seen have dessicant inside as well.

Yeah, it's pretty dry here. I drained it thoroughly yesterday and had fans blowing on the keyboard half of the laptop, from above and below, with the easy covers and battery removed. No water seemed to have reached the lower portion of the laptop, and the easy-open areas in the bottom were dry. Hard drive was untouched.

Today I had a room heater blow at the keyboard from a couple of feet away for a few hours. Now I'm typing this message on the affected laptop, and everything seems to be working perfectly, thank goodness. I popped the battery in, pressed the power button, and waited anxiously. I can't express the relief I felt when the password screen appeared, and a Portal Turret's voice greeted me, "Hello friend."

Thanks again, everyone, for all of your help!

PlasticTopHat said:

...everything seems to be working perfectly, thank goodness.

Glad you "lucked-out" and thanks for reporting back!

As I type this my coffee cup is on a pull-out shelf from my desktop, well away from my keyboard!