Liquid Damage to HP Envy x360

[nathderbyshire]

Hi,

I have knocked a drink over my laptop while it was turned on idle on the side. I immediately picked it up and turned it upside down to make sure no liquid went further inside.

I powered off the machine and wiped it down externally with a towel and used an air can and cold dryer to dry/blow any water out of the internal system. 

After drying it and letting it sit I decided as it's out of warranty anyway I'll open the laptop up and see if it needs drying inside. I removed the screws but one screw was trapped at the front track pad and I had to pry it off to open the case, thankfully undamaged as it was only a small screw. 

Looking inside there was barely any liquid only a couple of visible drops at the sides. I unscrewed the SSD and removed that, no damage or moisture, went to remove the battery but again two screws are broken. I managed to get one out finally but it's damaged the turning and the other screw is completely stuck and just chipping away when I turn. For a £1000 laptop I'm seriously not happy with the internal build quality but since I've removed the cover and voided anything I guess it didn't matter anyway. I can't get the battery out of the casing but I've disconnected it from the board and used a tool to ensure they don't contact again but I can't now remove the battery and get to the rest of the device to check for further damage. 

I've checked all the other hardware components I can and flicked up every cable and there's no visible damage, it seems what got under came out before leaking through but I again used cloth and dry air to completely dry every component. 

From what I can see there is no liquid on any main components and it never got to the power section of the laptop, but after letting it dry I reconnected the battery and it wouldn't turn on. 

I plugged in the cable to see if the battery was dead but still no sign of life from the machine. I unplugged the cable and re disconnected the battery going through the steps again to check for damage to cables or components but nothing got through. 

I left the battery unplugged and plugged in the power cable and the light on the power button glowed for about 5 seconds and went off. I repeated it and it glowed again. I did it all again with the battery and the light didn't appear only when it's disconnected. 

I've now removed everything and left it sat with an airflow on its side to clear any condensation that may be inside but since it didn't get the screen and only under the keyboard, and didn't leak through anywhere else, I'm worried it's circuited the board instead of just a component being destroyed. 

What is my best action going forward? Does it sound like a battery failure and safety cut off or have I fried the device completely? I'm not really sure what to do about repair as I didn't take cover. 

Thanks for any help.

[WAWood]

@nathderbyshire 

Turn the laptop OFF -- and do NOT turn it back ON!!

Spilling liquid on a laptop is the second-most damaging thing you can do to it (first is dropping it on a hard floor).

Here are some tips on dealing with liquid damage: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/you-just-spilled-water-or-coffee-on-your-laptop-heres-what-you-should-d...

However, since you already turned it back on,  it's most likely that SOME damage was done, regardless of how quickly you turned off the laptop at first. The key problems are only the surface and almost certainly, more damage was done than that.

The ONLY way to know for sure is to take or send it to an HP Service Center and pay a LOT of money for them to run full diagnostics on it, and after that, to disassemble it to repair or replace any damaged components.

And, if the motherboard is damaged, the cost of repair can easily exceed the cost of replacing the laptop -- because (as far as I know) liquid spill damage is NOT covered under the warranty.

Since you live outside the U.S., here is a link to HP Service Centers, by Country/Region: https://support.hp.com/in-en/service-center

If that link does not give you the information you need, here is the general support link:

https://support.hp.com/us-en/contact-hp?openCLC=true

[nathderbyshire]

Hi thanks for replying. 

Sorry I would like to clarify a few points as I was rather stressed when posting.

My first mistake was turning the power off using windows and not the power button but having never gone through this it didn't even occur to me and usually force shutting down can be worse for liquid damage for the circuits. Windows took 5 seconds to shut down and the cable was out and device was upside down within 30 seconds of the spill 

I've done a lot of looking online about what damage to expect and what to look out for. Your article really helped and reading it I think I narrowly avoided a short circuit as there is no smell, discolouring, sparks or disturbance on any of the visual boards. 

As I mentioned there's is a damaged battery screw. This is something I don't want to pry put with the delicacy of batteries and I'm not sure to how remove it completely, there is definitely no connection as a rubber device is propped between the battery and the slot but I'm still worried about the setup. 

I may have caused an issue taking the battery out and plugging the cord in but like I mentioned lights came on and nothing else happened, I haven't connected anything since. 

I don't think I'm going to risk sending off for repair as it's too delicate and unless it fixed itself there's little hope, the SSD was unharmed so whatever data I have is safe on there but I did a manual backup of everything literally hours before this happened so I haven't lost anything.

The only thing I could really try is to get a new battery and if that doesn't work call it quits an an internal got caught. There is parts number on everything inside. Is this something I would be able to order and replace or are these codes for internal use only?

Thanks