Screen black after water damage

Community Support
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Hello everyone!

I have an issue with my Framework 16 screen being completely unresponsive and a tale to tell.

Last sunday i packed my bag after visiting my parents for the weekend but forgot to close my new water bottle correctly (fyi don’t ever get one of those push-click ones) which promptly decided to spill it’s content into my backpack flooding the whole thing around 8cm (roughly 3 inches for imperial inclined).

Noticed the leakage after around 5 min and immediatly drained the whole laptop (drain is the correct term given the puddle it created). I postponed my departure and immediatly disassemble the laptop in pure panic mode. Then went ahead and used pressured air to get all water out making sure to not miss a single spot before running a hairdryer over it.
Rebuild the whole thing (without the battery) and went on my very worried way to my university appointment.

There i took the thing apart apart again, made sure everything was dry and started it in reset mode by stupidly hitting the button on the mother board.

I know.. mistake. Should have waited a lot longer but the deadline next day and my panic for the laptop did not help my decision making and curiosity.

Screen turned on and everything seemed fine for abotu 2 min, then the screen turned off.
I got panicked and took it apart again realizing i had forgotten the screen which still had some water behind it. Dried that of, layed the whole thing in a crate full of these moisture absorbing balls and left it there for 4 hours.

Afterwards the screen turned on once more for a minute with marking which i expect to be water damage and then never again.
Left the laptop in the oven at 40 degrees celsius over night and all week until now.

Tried everything today again while making sure the rest works and i got lucky. Everything seems completely fine, left speaker stills work, data all good, graphics card working, fans work fine again aswell after a BIOS update just the screen is still black.

Here is an imgur link to some pictures: Framework 16 water damage - Album on Imgur

Now to my questions before i order a replacement:

  • Could this be something else than the screen like a sub PCB?
  • Could the screen possibly be salvagable?
  • Is there anything i should check to make sure everything is really working?

TL;DR:
Turned the Framework 16 into a semi-submersable, dried everything off but forgot to dismount the screen. Showed briefly some sort of damage now it won’t turn on. What can i do to make sure it’s just the screen?

Thanks in advance and hope you all are having a nice start to your weeks!

Toykio

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What kind of water was it? Tap water, bottled, with minerals, electrolytes, flavor, etc. You know, there are so many options today.

Just to double-check, the only part powered on without an initial drying session was the screen, correct?

Have you booted without any of the side expansion cards? I would give that a shot, if you haven’t tried it. Unlikely to help, but anything simple & easy is worth a shot to me in the case of water damage. How is your monitor connected?

Well, since there isn’t any sub PCBs in the path, I would think it has to be the display or the motherboard. Yeah, I’m sorry to say, that there is some possibility that there is damage in the motherboard. With any two parts connected, shorts can go and affect the other side. Hopefully not, and I think most likely not, but considering the possibility might be better for planning on what you might need to spend.

You could run error tests on your RAM, and SMART self-test on your SSD.

If on linux, you could read through dmesg or just print issues sudo dmesg | grep -i -E 'error|warn|failed', and check other logs if you wish.

With water damage, I’m afraid you can’t check everything 100%, as just anything could have received some damage, which may not even show up initially.

You’ve done quite a bit, it sounds like. So seem willing to put effort into having the best chance of reducing damage. Take a look at the recommendations here: help.ifixit.com/article/105-water-damage. That’s what I always recommend for anyone willing. Of course, it always depends on how much time and spare effort one has available, and how much they value their time & effort. Some have the luxury, or just mindset, of tossing anything at the slightest inconvenience & just ordering a new one. Some just do not have the time and / or spare effort.

Speaking again of, anything simple & easy being worth a shot. With something like a failure to boot, I suggest testing with as many variables removed as possible. And I think this could also be useful with the widespread area of effect water damage can have. Removing variables can be done by disconnecting everything possible and trying to boot. This is more than people sometimes think. To boot, at least to the bios screen, only a single RAM module should be needed. No SSD, nothing else at all. How likely is it, say, your wifi card effecting your screen? Well, I would hope it’s a supremely tiny chance. But, removing everything eliminates variables like nothing else, and it’s easy.

The way water can go anywhere and damage can exist in levels of severity, it’s hard to know much. With so much unknown, it’s possible. My guess generally with water damage is that once you find a major issue, you’re unlikely to be able to fix that part.

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Thank you for the detailed and in-depth reply!

The water was just regular tap water, very soft so not a lot of minerals.

Yes. The bottom housing was completely disassmbled and air pressure dried thouroughly.
The top housing was just air pressured on the surface with the plasic frame removed.

Tried that idea right now, automatically went into the memory training, rebooted it with the reset button and heard the windows startup but no picture.

Typical as all Framework 16s, no additional modification or changes made.

I used it today with a USB C to HDMI adapter and it ran completely fine so i have little worries about the motherboard. That exactly the spot where they connect on the motherboard was damaged but nothing else seems extremely unlikely but will check it.

Thanks! Added that and the stripping down to minimum components to the to-do list for tomorrow and report back then as it is already past 1am here.

I am lucky it’s seeming just the screen and mostly just want to make sure that is the only broken part and nothing else to not need to buy replacment parts multiple times as i need to laptop for university work. Replacment cost of that hurts and obviously i would love for it to be fixable but i don’t have that much luxery apart from 1-2 weeks.

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Hello again,

i ran error tests on the RAM and checked the NVME with wmic diskdrive get status and both came back with no issues.

The complete strip and subsequent boots with less components did not change anything with the screen and i could not find any other issue when checking the connection cable.
Only ramining worry i have is that it might be the eDP cable instead but that shouldn’t have been impacted by the water compare to the screen.

I will go ahead and order a replacement screen and hope that this was the issue and maybe i can at some point in my semester holidays try to see if the screen itself is salvagable as a second screen or such.

Thanks for the help so far!

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Or even worse the connector on the mainboard side, the cable would be a relatively easy swap if you can get it but if the connector on the mainboard got messed up it’s getting a lot harder. It’s also possible some of the passives dealing with the edp signal got messed up from the water damage. I’d have a very close look around that area.

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Something like this was my concern when I mentioned, as you’re planning on what you might need to spend, consider that your mainboard being damaged is unfortunately a possibility. An external monitor could still work if there was only damage somewhere along the path of the eDP for the internal screen.

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There can be pretty much total damage to the edp bit and external monitor would still work.

@toykio When using an external display does the post screen show up on the external display or the internal/not at all? Does the internal display show up in display manager or device manager or anything?

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The post (framework logo with loading icon) shows up on the external monitor. Then gets briefly interrupted and comes back as the Windows login screen.

The internal display does not show up at all, neither in the settings nor device manager.

I’ll take an extra look at the motherboard eDP area just to be sure i didn’t miss anything.

Edit: Looked for anything visible damage wise on the motherboard such as missing or burned out resistor or such (i know is not very helpfull) but couldn’t find anything.
Given that i am at my capabilities end and there doesn’t seem to be a way with accessable software to locate the issue currently any further i’m going to wait for the replacement screen and go from there.

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That mean there isn’t any communication between the screen and the maniboard at all, can be mainboard-side, the cable or the screen.

May be worth to try just rinsing the display connector area with ethanol/isopropanol and letting it dry, those high speed lines are very sensitive.

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Turns out it was the screen. New one arrived yesterday and installed it just now and everything seems to be working perfectly fine again.

Thank you for your help @Adrian_Joachim and @MJ1

I’ll see if i can figure out what is wrong with the other screen during my semester holidays but i’m generally just really happy i only ended up needing to get a new screem given how much water there was.

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Guess the fluid may have bridged vsys to some sensitive signal pins and the laptop side fortunately has much better over voltage protection than the display side.