Cleaning up soda spill

[JrDave2304]

This weekend some person, who isnt very smart, managed to spill rum and coke on my laptop and then left without telling me. As you can imagine it is very sticky. It boots up but nothing appears on the screen, so I don't know if the screen is shot (which i pray it isnt) or if i just need to clean up the inside of the computer.

My question is, what is a good way to clean the soda spill up off all of my internal parts? Any particular products that are good for this?

 

[mparr1708]

Originally posted by: JrDave2304
This weekend some person, who isnt very smart, managed to spill rum and coke on my laptop and then left without telling me. As you can imagine it is very sticky. It boots up but nothing appears on the screen, so I don't know if the screen is shot (which i pray it isnt) or if i just need to clean up the inside of the computer.

My question is, what is a good way to clean the soda spill up off all of my internal parts? Any particular products that are good for this?

I think your fatal mistake was probably booting it up before making sure everything was clean and dry.

You can try the following though... I would go to Dell's website and get the service manual for your notebook. Get a bottle of rubbing alcohol and some clean lint free cloths. The type you use to clean glasses and such would probably work best. Then carefully (and I mean very carefully) disassemble your notebook and clean each part. You do NOT want to soak the lens cloth with alcohol. Use just enough alcohol to make the cloth damp. If you leak excess liquid into the parts of your notebook you will make things worse.

As you go through each part look for any burn marks or any other clues to lead to something shorting out. Look at the capacitors on your mobo and see if any look black. If the notebook boots up but nothing displays my first guess would be video card as it would be much more susceptible to liquid making it fail then the LCD.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: mparr1708
I think your fatal mistake was probably booting it up before making sure everything was clean and dry.

QFT. I've heard of computers and notebooks that have survived various liquid spills - as long as the spill was cleaned up and everything was dried before attempting to power up. Oh yeah, one problem I did hear of was a friend of mine cleaned up a wine spill on their notebook and to "speed up" the drying time used a hairdryer. Some of the keys on the keyboard melted but it all still worked.

 

[cheesehead]

I'm not too familar with the 700m, but I know a few tricks that might help.
First, remove the battery and power. This is always a good idea.
Second, remove the top bezel. This will let you get at the keyboard screws.
Then, remove the keyboard. Below it should be most of the important bits in your laptop. Use rubbing alcohol and Q-tips to clean it off, and remove any connectors and clean them off too.
Put the laptop back together, and see if it works.

EDIT:
I'm not sure about the 700m, but most Dell laptops have a connector for the LCD on the motherboard. Pay special attention to getting it cleaned out, as the pins are usually quite small and easily shorted.

 

[BladeVenom]

Last time I spilled water on my desktop keyboard it disolved the electrical connection traces on the plastic sheets underneath the keys. Are laptop keyboards made the same way as most desktop keyboards?

 

[cheesehead]

Sort of. They're pressure-based, making them more like a TV remote control and less like a standard "clicky" desktop keyboard. Most laptop keyboards have little rubber boots over the contacts, so you might get lucky.
Also, copper traces should NOT dissolve if you pour water on them. They should, all things considered, be coated anyway; but if they dissolved then that must have been a very cheap keyboard indeed.

 

[jdiddy]

You should find who did it and make them pay for your repairs if you can't get it working.

 

[BladeVenom]

Originally posted by: Cheesehead
Also, copper traces should NOT dissolve if you pour water on them. They should, all things considered, be coated anyway; but if they dissolved then that must have been a very cheap keyboard indeed.

It was a Microsoft keyboard, so it wasn't all that cheap. All the keyboards I've disassembled have used silver colored traces.