Laptop won't turn on - flashing caps lock - water damage

[dand4278]

Hi,

A few days ago, I accidentally spilt half a pint of lemonade onto my laptop keyboard. I immediately unplugged it, removed the battery and tried to wipe/ shake away any liquid I could. I left the laptop to dry overnight and the next day I took off the bottom and wiped the liquid away from the casing before leaving it like this. I came home to find my dad using a hairdryer to dry my laptop in an attempt to be helpful. I immediately stopped him and left the laptop again.

Today I plugged the laptop in and attempted to turn it on. The laptop made a small noise before the fan stopped and the caps lock light began to flash slowly and continuously. The screen remained black and nothing else happened. The light indicating the laptop is plugged in is working.

I have so far tested the RAM, hard drive, fan, and keyboard. These are all functioning fine. I suspect the motherboard or CPU are to blame but don’t really know anything about these. Can I test them in some way, replace them and fix the laptop myself, get it repaired by someone else or is it just completely broken and needs to be replaced?

Thanks 😊

[ichi730]

Hi dand4278,

Good thing you were able to stop your pops from drying it using a hairdryer. Hairdryers create static and that could mess the chips of your machine.

You could visit a local tech shop to have it clean up or you could clean it up your self using anti static fabric cloth that you could purchase from any tech store such as home depot or amazon. You could also use a can of air to dry it up instead of a hair dryer.

A lemonade liquid on the other hand could be sticky and could damage the system fan not to mention the motherboard. Your other option is to call HP and let them know what happened so you could send it in. Ofcourse you have to pay for it not unless your computer is under ADP warranty (Accidental Damage Plan). Dont expect it to be cheap though 🙂

What I did with my computer back then is to wrap it in a clean cloth and place it in a cool dry place without the sun then after few days soaked it in a box with rice grains. Rice grains could eliminate moisture from a wet device but im not sure if it could eliminate a lemonade since it has a sticky liquid when dried.

Hope it helps,

ichi