Cat + water + laptop = bad news
Mar. 22nd, 2006 08:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tagrynOn Friday, about a half-hour before we were scheduled to go out of town for three days, I was using my laptop when our black-and-white cat Rascal tried to jump up on my desk. Well, he didn't quite make it, and a flurry of scrambling around for balance at the edge of my desk progressed. Unfortunately, a glass of water was occupying the same space at the same time as his paws...
...water which was promptly knocked over, right into my laptop keyboard.
At first, I thought it had mostly gone on the desk, since the laptop seemed fine for 5-10 seconds & the desk was pretty soaked. But then the laptop just died. I tried turning it back on immediately (as it turns out, NOT something you're supposed to do), no dice. I went online via Donna's computer, and the general advice was to let it sit and dry out for a few days. Unfortunately, after we came back from our trip the Vaio was still DOA, so I'm back to using my old Dell Latitude (circa 1998) and looking for a good laptop deal to come along.
Lesson: either don't have any liquids near or above a laptop, or at least make sure they have lids on them.
What makes this more frustrating is after having put a couple hundred dollars into the machine last June to fix a common overheating problem, it had been working hummingly since then. Alas.
...water which was promptly knocked over, right into my laptop keyboard.
At first, I thought it had mostly gone on the desk, since the laptop seemed fine for 5-10 seconds & the desk was pretty soaked. But then the laptop just died. I tried turning it back on immediately (as it turns out, NOT something you're supposed to do), no dice. I went online via Donna's computer, and the general advice was to let it sit and dry out for a few days. Unfortunately, after we came back from our trip the Vaio was still DOA, so I'm back to using my old Dell Latitude (circa 1998) and looking for a good laptop deal to come along.
Lesson: either don't have any liquids near or above a laptop, or at least make sure they have lids on them.
What makes this more frustrating is after having put a couple hundred dollars into the machine last June to fix a common overheating problem, it had been working hummingly since then. Alas.
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no subject
Date: 2006-03-23 07:42 am (UTC)Since it was water, there shouldn't be too much crud bridging the circuit traces. On the other hand, if the laptop is a few years old, dust could be truend into bridging crud. If the circuit board underneath the keyboard looks messy, youo may need to clean it.
It might be difficult to find but try to get "Circuit cooler" or an evaporative spray cleaner. The old freon based cleaners were effective but they have been pulled from the market. Try a CFC-free cleaner such as: http://www.ecolink.com/products/prodpages/ecolink2005a.html.
Spray the cleaner onto the circuit board to remove any bridging residue.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-24 04:50 am (UTC)Looking under the keyboard, it seems like the water's location was just right to do a number on the motherboard and power supply. I didn't hear any crackling or smell smoke at the time, which gave me hope that it might come back, but looks like that was in vain. I'll give it a couple more days to dry out and try it again, but it looks very doubtful at this point.
If it were a newer laptop I might send it off for repairs, but as a 5+ year old model it just seems smarter to spend the money on a new machine, especially with prices being as low as they are nowadays.
On the "good news" side, I had just completed a backup to CD three days before, so the loss of files was fairly minor. I'm seriously considering adding a DVD writer to my next computer, since it seems able to back up a much bigger chunk of the drive (4.7 GB vs 700MB?) at one time.