My computer is under water, any suggestions?

[apoppin]

You guys are talking about distilled water. . . .

How about an "oil" like electronics cleaner?

If my Sony TV made it through a flood (and I didn't do anything except dry it out) - your computers may also.
Let us know.

 

[Need4Speed]

ive used a food dehydrator to save my cell phone once....

 

[BigDaddyRock]

Originally posted by: Smilin
Don't just plug it back in.

Grab a couple of gallons of distilled water from the grocery and use it to rinse of the areas that got submerged. Let it dry thoroughly and then fire it up.

take the cmos battery out b4 you start - your cmos is probably cleared already anyway.

I was wondering about the Cmos Battery and if it provided enough power to do any damage? It was submerged due to it being in the lower right hand corner of the box. I guess the box would start up without the cmos battery I will remove it before I fire it up.

Thanks

 

[Fugifighter]

Computer hardware is very durable. I'm almost sure it will work if you clean and dry everything.

I speak from experience but not with hardware and water but hardware and FIRE.

I used to live in an apartment with 3 other people. Well during one of the breaks i left for home and i live 6 hours away from college so i didnt get home until late that nite. Needless to say, i got a phone call from one of my roommates and he said "Dude, you gotta come back, our house caught fire." I was not amused since i just drove 6 straight hours and all i wanted to do was sleep. Well he kept his tone and he said again, "no man, it's not a joke, our house caught on fire."

Well my heart sank and being a computer enthusiast the first thing out of my mouth was .... "IS MY COMPUTER STILL WORKING?" Well when i got back to the apartment, i saw the room next to mine was all black with ash and still wet from all the water the fire company must have pumped into it. I walked into the apartment and saw all of the water damage from that room seeping thru to the living room downstairs. I went up to the rooms and saw the room with the fire with NOTHING in it but ash. Then i went into mine which was covered with sticky goo that the fire department probably sprayed to keep the fire from coming thru the wall. I saw my tower case and it was covered with ash and that sticky stuff. I collected my belongings and went to a friend's house and started cleaning what i could. well when all was done, i didnt expect much since it was all sticky and ashy still inside my case with all the cleaning i did. I hit the power button and to my surprise, everything seemed fine. i did a couple of tests (games) and everything was fine. the only problem i did see was that when i tried to restart my computer, it would not boot up again unless i shut down. that was a minor detail since i usually shut down my computer anyways and then boot up from cold.

Well to sum it all up, i think computers have come a long way to survive most of the elements. What happened to this computer you might be asking? well i took what i could from it (plextor 8/20 and scsi card) and then i sold it for $60 to some guy and put the money towards a new computer.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: BigDaddyRock

Originally posted by: Smilin
Don't just plug it back in.

Grab a couple of gallons of distilled water from the grocery and use it to rinse of the areas that got submerged. Let it dry thoroughly and then fire it up.

take the cmos battery out b4 you start - your cmos is probably cleared already anyway.

I was wondering about the Cmos Battery and if it provided enough power to do any damage? It was submerged due to it being in the lower right hand corner of the box. I guess the box would start up without the cmos battery I will remove it before I fire it up.

Thanks

No, the battery shouldn't damage anything - but having everything all shorted with water and then having a trickle of power running thru cmos might screw up the code - nothing a good reflash couldn't fix. Taking it out can also save you the possibility that it will be out of juice when you put it back in.

Another tale to relieve your fears: We had a sprinkler system go off in a computer lab - the first computer popped the breaker when it shorted and it took a bit of damage. The rest of them took about a week to dry but every one of the twenty or so worked fine afterwards.

 

[DannyBoy]

Originally posted by: Oric
Mud and salts in the flood water is the real problem. Especially in the PCI / AGP slots and CPU sockets

Wash and rinse your board

Rinse it again !

then dry and use it ...

well if it only went half way up the board it didnt get the cpu socket did it

dan

 

[DimZiE]

since the power was out.. ( i assume the power is out before your basement was flooded ) yes it,ll boot up..

1. rinse for the 1st time, dry it, spray all the contacts on the board with contact spray, dry it, rinse it again, dry it, put everything back.
2. no the CMOS battery would not give u any problem
3. parts to worry about : CDROM,HDD ( these parts contain moving parts usually flood water carries mud and dirt that might damage these moving parts )
if u know how to disassemble a CDROM drive ( or any optical drive ) without destroying it. then i suggest to disassemble it and clean everything ( except for the optics ) and a HDD can be quite tricky some HDD had holes for no apparent reason and some dirt or mud could be stuck in it , i suggest to check your drive(s) thoroughly.


done this on a system that was kicked by my drunk-friend into a swimming pool at a LANparty .
i had to dry it for three days just to make sure it's dry... unfortunately the HDD died

which reminds me not to serve BEER on the next LANparty at my house

 

[BigDaddyRock]

Just wanted to leave an update.


All of my Computers are back up and running, here is what I did.

1. Opened up the boxes and took out all of the PCI and Agp cards out of the slots. I cleaned off the surface with a wet cloth to get rid of anything that might be on it.

2. I put a Fan on them for 2 days.

3. I had to get a Dehydrator for my basement since it was flooded and while I had this industrial Dehydrator I put my Machines next to it to pull out any water that was soaked in. These Dehydrators really do the job and no telling how many gallons of water this thing pulled out of the air.

4. Let them set for 10 days before plugging them back in ( Basically because the basement was a wreck anyway so waited as long as I could)

5. I Booted them up with everything plugged in that was plugged in before and with all of the cards back in the slots. They worked fine.


Other note My Linksys 4 port Router which was underwater also worked fine and all of my Surge Protectors after being dried out worked as well. I replaced the Cat 5 Cable just because when water gets in the lines they will still work but it hurts the connectivity and did not want to worry about that.


Thanks for all your Help,

Big Daddy Rock

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: BigDaddyRock
Just wanted to leave an update.


All of my Computers are back up and running, here is what I did.

1. Opened up the boxes and took out all of the PCI and Agp cards out of the slots. I cleaned off the surface with a wet cloth to get rid of anything that might be on it.

2. I put a Fan on them for 2 days.

3. I had to get a Dehydrator for my basement since it was flooded and while I had this industrial Dehydrator I put my Machines next to it to pull out any water that was soaked in. These Dehydrators really do the job and no telling how many gallons of water this thing pulled out of the air.

4. Let them set for 10 days before plugging them back in ( Basically because the basement was a wreck anyway so waited as long as I could)

5. I Booted them up with everything plugged in that was plugged in before and with all of the cards back in the slots. They worked fine.


Other note My Linksys 4 port Router which was underwater also worked fine and all of my Surge Protectors after being dried out worked as well. I replaced the Cat 5 Cable just because when water gets in the lines they will still work but it hurts the connectivity and did not want to worry about that.


Thanks for all your Help,

Big Daddy Rock

Good News, your "luck" held!

 

[arcenite]

Great to hear it

Bill