August 28, 2007

How to Save your Laptop If A Spill Happens…

Laptop If you work on your laptop at you are bound to slip up once and a while and bring a drink to sit next to it while your working. I mean come on most people do it even if they know they shouldn’t.

I know your thinking as long as I am extra careful nothing will happened accidents do happen when you least expect them too. So what are you to do.

Well the best thing to do to prevent any damage at all is to keep all liquids as far away from your laptop as possible.

In the real world things happen and the bad news is if the beverage was coffee,wine or soda they are some what acidic. That acid will corrode metal contacts.

If the dreaded accident does occur this is what you can do to try and save your laptop.

First thing you need to do is to turn off the power to the laptop. If it is plugged into the wall do not unplug it at the wall outlet,because you take the risk of getting a shock of 110 volts or more. Go to your circuit breaker and turn off the power there. If it running on a battery power and you do not see any sparks or hear any unusual noises or smell anything burning you can proceed to turn it off the usual way. If this fails then take the battery out.

Then ground yourself by touching a metal object that runs to the ground or a screw on a faceplate. Then remove the battery and AC adaptor and dry off any liquid that may have spilled on them. Then set them aside. If they were saturated in liquid just consider that a loss and buy a replacement battery or AC adaptor or both.

Then proceed to disconnect any other device that may be connected to the laptop such as a usb mouse or printer,etc. Remove any cards installed in the PC slot. Then proceed to dry them off. If any liquid enter the PC slot use a cotton swab to dry it. Be careful as to not leave any cotton threads in the PC slot.

After you have completed the last step dry the display screen with a lint free cloth. Use a clean dampened cloth to clean any sticky residue.

Next remove any hard drives and CD/DVD drives hooked up to the plug-in bays and dry them off and set aside. Then open up the memory module container and remove the memory module and proceed to dry it and set aside.

Then dry the keyboard with a lint-free cloth. If the spill consisted of coffee or soda refer to your computer manual on how to carefully remove the key-caps that were affected. But before removing caps be sure to have keyboard chart or make a digital photo of your keyboard board so that put the key-caps back into the right place.

Then dry the exposed keyboard membrane and switch cover and the keys themselves. Then take the laptop and sit it on a sturdy table and sit either two books or boxes under the laptop and let it dry for at least a 24 hour period. Do not try to speed up the drying process by using a blow dryer.

After the 24 hour period has passed then reassemble the pieces that you removed. Be sure everything dry before putting it back together. Ground yourself before reassembling. If you are in doubt about any part it is best to replace it.

Filed under PC Tips