Wine Spill.... Can it be saved?

About a month or so ago, my friend spilled a glass of wine over my laptop. The laptop instantly turned off. I did try turning it back on (wrong move I know) but nothing.

Next day I opened it as much as I could and stood it in front of an open oven to try and dry it out. Later that day the laptop turned on.

However, over the last few weeks it has had trouble turning on. When I pressed the on button, the fan would fire up but it wouldn't go on, I could hear it trying over and over and over again and after about 1/2 hour of trying it would eventually turn on.

But..... now it won't turn on at all. I haven't been able to turn it on for the last few days. I can still hear it firing up and trying to work, but nothing.

Do you think the laptop is repairable or should I accept it's death and move on?

 

Greetings, sherylp...

Ugh...wine + laptop = not good...

First things I'd try would be:

1. Connect a discrete monitor, see if there are any video indications at all.

2. Does the CD/DVD tray open? If so, try inserting a bootable disk (Windows, Linux, etc.), see if anything good happens.

Those are just shots in the dark, though. What's the make and model # of the laptop? You may be able to find a good repair manual and see how difficult it would be to dismantle the machine, but your symptoms don't sound good. I'd charge probably $200-300 to attempt to repair a damaged laptop like yours - and you can buy a new machine for that money.

 

Well the DVD tray opens so I might try loading the bootable disk in the morning. It is an Acer Aspire 5742.

I didn't think it would be able to be saved, but thought I'd ask just to be sure before I throw it out

Thanks Caliban

 

I would sell it for parts only on ebay. If you have a local shop that does electronic recycling, they will part out what parts they can use and toss the others into recycling. Keep the hard drive though, since you do not want it going out to the wild with your info on it.

 

Just re-read my post and realized I forgot to mention to boot to the bootable disk (sounds logical, but I'm just sayin'...). If your disk is a Linux distro you may be able to fire up a flash drive and copy any important data.

Not finding any good repair manuals for the Aspire 5742 - yet...

 

What I would do at this point is a complete strip down pull out all the connectors and examine the contact strips on the ribbon cables for corrosion if you find any a drop of lighter fluid (the type used in petrol lighters) will break the corrosion down without damaging the contacts.
Also check the motherboard for sticky patches and inspect the solder joints, you can also use lighter fluid to clean up those patches but some re-soldering may be needed. There is also the possibility that the wine went under one or more of the BGA chips and has rotted some of the pins away,

The best thing to do in the case of liquid damage is kill the power take out the battery strip the unit down as fast as possible, shake off all the excess fluid and mop up as much moisture as possible (I normally use some kitchen tissue) then place all the parts in a warm place for a few hours this will give the greatest chance of recovering it but the longer you leave it the less chance you have.

 

Thanks guys, I am not technically minded at all, so I'm thinking I might be best just selling it off for parts.

I might have a go at opening it up and having a look for corrosion, but I'm thinking it may have to go as parts.

 

It's unlikely it's corroded in such a short time.

You can try to clean them. The problem is practically any liquid other than pure water will leave a conductive residue, this is what causes the problem the transistors work off tiny currents so any current from anywhere will throw it out of whack. The good news is it's usually not permanent damage, the voltage isn't high enough to cause burning.

To clean it you'll need to take the whole thing apart and put the motherboard in the sink and spray the whole thing with citrus cleaner to remove the bulk of the residue, let it run off into the sink,dab it dry with paper towels 'take it outside' then spray contact cleaner all over it, this will wash the citrus cleaner off and any remaining residue. It will also almost completely evaporate off but needs to be done outside because contact cleaner is a solvent.

Once the contact cleaner has evaporated you can force dry it in a warm place if you wish.

Throw the keyboard away if it's got under the keys, if it's got inside a sealed component like a cdrom you may want to just throw it away.

This is the process I use now on major spills.It's a lot of work but if your willing...

 

YouTube has always helped me with info about my notebooks. The link is a search for your model.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=search_videos&search_query=Acer+Aspire+5742&search_sort=relevance&search_category=0&page=