Water Damage

[Alexandra_K]

I spilled some water into my laptop. It was not a lot, but just enough for my laptop to shut itself off. It did not shut down completely, once it detected the water, the screen turned off and the caps lock key light began to blink. That's all it has been able to do since the water incident. I have placed my laptop in a bag of rice. The water spill happened around 3pm, I've had it in a bag of rice since 4pm. 

What does the blinking caps lock light mean? Is there hope for my laptop?

[WAWood]

@Alexandra_K 

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

The rice takes a couple of DAYS to dry out the laptop, not a couple of hours.

However ... it's most likely that SOME damage was done, regardless of how quickly you turned off the laptop and what you did afterward. 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.

If you live in the U.S., here is a link to the HP Service Repair Centers:
https://www.service-center-locator.com/hp-hewlett-packard/hp-hewlett-packard-service-center.htm

If 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

[Alexandra_K]

@WAWood 

Thank you for your response, I greatly appreciate it,

I looked up what the blink code meant that my caps lock key gave off, 3 slow blinks, and 5 fast blinks.  From my internet search, the answers to what those blinks meant were "laptop is no good" and "hardware."  I do not know what either of those means.

If my computer still turns on, will I still be able to retrieve data from the hard drive? I have seen situations where repair people hook the damaged laptop to another laptop and from the secondary laptop, they can see what my laptop would see.