Laptop won't boot

[kelly]

I have a Dell Inspiron laptop in here where customer spilled wine on keyboard. It wouldn't boot when I got it. When you pressed the power button, the fan and a light would turn on and you could hear hard drive access a couple of times and then it would just sit. No POST.

I reseated RAM, removed keyboard and everything looked OK inside. No sign of damage. I removed the hard drive and mada an Acronis Image. Put it back together and it worked.

However, the integrated Ethernet was yellow in Dev Mgr and although USB ports were OK in Dev Mgr they did not work. I have a USB power checker and it showed no USB power available and of course flash drives and ext USB hard drives are not working.

Installed a PCMCIA/USB adapter to see if I could get USB ports that was. No good. Guess PCMCIA port is also bad. Removed PCMCIA card.

Computer now gets stuck while starting (sometimes). Gets stuck with Windows screen and the writing is kinda grey'd out or dimmed. Was able to get it to boot to CD, so I reseated HD. Additionally, I again reseated RAM and keyboard. Now it's back to where it was when I got it. Won't boot, won't POST. It has a mind all its own.

Any ideas?
- tony

[qldit]

Good Afternoon kelly, although you may be getting what appears to be reasonable operation from that machine the prognosis is poor.
Usually any watery kind of fluid spill in fine electronic devices will allow ingress into miniature circuitry, especially where complex integrated circuits affix to the board.
areas and immediately initiate electrolysis kinds of effects and circuit integrity is lost.

In some cases complete dismantling of the machine to the bare board and thorough cleaning and neutralising of any effect then proper drying will allow normal operation to be recovered.
This is a "maybe" action, so unless you have significant technical ability to carry it out yourself will be very expensive.

Generaly when these kinds of things happen the best "tack" is to scrap the machine and be more careful next time.
It is not sensible to spend money on these kinds of machine problems.
Commisserations, qldit.

[Seth]

I'd say the first step is to dismantle the lappy and clean it up (especially all the connectors).

EDIT:gl posted right before me.

Anyway, I agree. Clean it up as much as possible, but that's about all you can do.

[Dan18960]

Have the guy get one of those water proof laptops since he seems to want to DRINK and SURF

:eek:

[kelly]

Thanks for the replies. The machine has once again stopped working. Since it's really dead again, I'll take it apart and clean as suggested.

Any recommendation for a cleaning solution? Isopropa alcohol is what I'm thinking.

- tony

[qldit]

Good Morning Tony, further to the previous, when you examine the complexity and miniscule nature of the componentry on the M/B you will appreciate that "cross tracking" in the least imaginable kind of way is easily apparent and understandable.
Any water based substance sitting in such a close miniscule environment takes on different properties through electrolysis kinds of activity from the surrounding items and can become quite conductive in nature.
In these kinds of circumstances it is not unreasonable to expect that sensitive input circuits may be driven or affected by enormous overdrive kinds of voltages and destruct sensitive parts.

Even if that area were properly dried you would appreciate it would likely contain crystalline residue that would most likely be everafter subjet to humidity and other characteristic alterations so the problem can be expected to remain even if destructive damage had not happened.

So what to do, super carefully bearing this kind of possibility in mind, the device can be dissembled to it's most basic arrangement.
Usually the area of contamination will be evident, so this is the area of major focus.
It may also determine some different innovative technique to try to clean so that other areas are not affected.
A fine toothbrush, clean mineral free water, isopropyl alcohol (or methylated spirits) a magnifying glass, a hairdryyer, a source of compressed air with a suitable gun, excellent light, clear work area and all that kind of thing would be nice but invariably you will have to settle for the best you can do.

You may find that application of water or meth in some specific kind of tilted arrangement may be easiest being careful not to contaminate adjacent components and sockets etc.
Sopping up excess will be neccessary.
Although you bay obtain the opinion that you have cleaned this kind of stuff satisfactorily, very often residue will remain under the chips and may affect the printed tracks which are hidden, even though they are protected with a laquer.
So it may be pertinent to consider a substance which will penetrate these kinds of areas and leave a non-conductive oily type of residue. (with the hope that it may restrict air acces to that residue remnant.

So you see this really gets into an area of "kite flying" this kind of repair activity may or may not be successful and if successful may not be reliable.

The major consideration here is to accept this quite likely is the case, an explatory operation may be helpful but cancer is a pain! (literally)

Conversely if nothing is tried you will never know, you never know you may be the correct religion!!
Cheers, all the best, qldit.