Laptop hangs at boot screen

[manci5]

Since a coffee spill on the keyboard, my laptop won't normally boot as it did before. Now it just hangs on boot screen. It takes somewhere between 10s and 5min to boot. Sometime it requires to be reset several times to actually boot windows. I switched RAM, the problem persisted. Every component in my laptop is working (Wifi, Ethernet, Sound etc.) What should I do?

 

[essenbe]

Liquid and electronics do not get along very well. There is any number of things that could be wrong. The first thing I would suggest is to open an elevated command prompt ( click start, type in the search box cmd, right click on cmd and select run as administrator) in the command window type sfc /scannow . Copy and paste is good. It is a system file checker that will test the integrity of system files. If it says system files are OK, I would download the diagnostic program from the web site of the manufacturer of your hard drive and run that to see if there are any problems there. If your hard drive checks out, use this tutorial on running startup repair. Hopefully these will help.

 

[TVeblen]

I would also suggest taking the laptop apart and cleaning it. Any residual coffee, sugar, cream caked on the circuit boards could cause problems with mini-shorting (coffee and cream is not a very efficient conductor, fortunately).

Clean a Spill on a Laptop | PCWorld
How to Save a Laptop from Liquid Damage - wikiHow

If you are uncomfortable with taking the laptop apart - or more importantly, putting it back together - you could take it to a local computer shop or even a big-box electronics store with a "nerd-herd" counter to have it done.

 

[Britton30]

If it was plain, black coffee, it should do no harm. It should have been immediately turned keyboard down and allowed to dry for a few days. Another thing to do is put the entire laptop in something big enough to cover and surround it completely with rice. Again, allow to sit several days.

If there was sugar or other additives in the coffee, this won't work. See the nerd-herd as suggested.