I spilled tea over my laptop and I dont know where to start with the repair.
I dried everything for days, 1st it turned on but couldn’t find the drive and stopped at the bios, I let it rest for a few more days then tried again, same only boots into BIOS. Opened it up to see if I can see some spillmarks on the NVMe but when opened it it did smell a bit burned I think… when I closed it up again now it doesnt turn on at all.
my question:
how do I know what I should order? Should I order every part and return the ones I dont need? Could be the fan or the motherboard, or the ram or the NVMe. NVMe is easiest to test as I have some spare ones but it doenst turn on at the moment so cant imageine thats the problem.
thank you!
AMD Ryzen™ 7 7840U (up to 5.1GHz, 8-core/16-thread)
Thing is, any liquid is bad. Worst is liquid like Coca Cola, which literally corrodes the circuits.
Even wine, with time, corrodes the circuitry. Coca Cola took 1 Week, Wine in the end a year.
If you had sugar in your Tea, it will put a thin jelly like layer on top of everything, and practically over time corrodes circuit lanes (Have 4 kids, everyone had an accident … ).
What you need to do immediately is:
Remove battery connection
get almost pure alcohol (95%+) and rinse whatever part got in touch with the Tea
Let it dry a little (~2 hours if you used only alcohol)
Then connect the battery again etc.
Problem is, the time you can disconnect the battery, damage may already be done (short circuit of some sort).
In your case, as that part is almost too late already, remove all non essential parts and see if you can get into the BIOS.
A picture of the motherboard would also help - usually you see more on a picture then when looking on it (marvels of phone cameras).
If it went through the bottom to the fan etc. it can have shorted some parts.
But as with all troubleshooting, you need to try and error until you find what does not work.
Remove everything, then try to boot, at least to go into the BIOS. And continue from there.
If it does not power up anymore, then something is already fatally broken. it will be up to you to decide from here on.
I would have submerged the whole device in distilled water until all the tea was washed off. Tea dissolves well in water and washes it away rather than alcohol / ethanol that evaporates quickly and leaves the tea were it was. Then let it dry fully. That might need a full week in a warm dry place to fully dry off.
If it no longer boots at all then there are still a few things you can check for signs of life. If you plug in a charger does a charging light come on?
Odd. Does it feel caught? I wouldn’t think tea could make it stick.
You don’t just spritz it with alcohol or otherwise use a small amount. You submerge it completely in isopropyl alcohol.
Denatured ethanol, aka ethyl alcohol, doesn’t seem to be easily available in high enough percentage, in some places at least. You want 90% or higher. In some places you can get 190 proof vodka. Grain alcohol = ethyl alcohol / ethanol, and 190 proof = 95% alcohol. But you don’t want to pay the added taxes on drinking alcohol. Unless you just can not get 90+% denatured alcohol / rubbing alcohol.
That’s the problem with water. It will get everywhere. It will wick into the narrowest gaps, thinner than paper. Like under chips. And the less exposure to air that mosture has, the longer it takes to dry. The narrowest gap under chips can take extremely long to dry. Submerge in 95-98% isopropyl alcohol. There are good reasons why professionals use it. And while we’re here, please no one ever, ever use rice. It’s not effective, and it leaves behind fine rice dust / starches.
thank you for all the advice @MJ1. Are you really saying I can submerge the whole disassembled laptop in its current state into >90% alcohol? Interesting. Maybe I should try this.
yes its really stuck and I almost bent it a tiny bit trying to lift it up. I followed the guide so I am sure I disconnected all the right parts (Mainboard Replacement Guide - Framework Guides)
Just the board itself. First remove any stickers and the thin black plastic covers that are just adhesively attached. Alcohol will melt normal sticker glue.
See: help.ifixit.com/article/105-water-damage
I would not put the whole laptop, even partially disassembled, into alcohol. At minimum, I wouldn’t get alcohol on the screen. Alcohol is a solvent. Fine for bare circuit boards, but it can affect other things. 90+% alcohol is regularly used to clean soldering flux off boards.
An additional reason why 95-98% isopropyl alcohol is good for cleaning water-damage is that it can suck water out. Isopropyl alcohol over 91% is hygroscopic, it sucks moisture out of anything it touches, even pulls it out of the humidity in the air.
At this point, though, the board might not be savable. Since it remained powered for some time after the spill. And was working for a time, then stopped. Not a great sign. But mainboards are expensive & alcohol is cheap, so still worth a shot.
Is it possible the top usb ports are catching on the edge of their case openings? Perhaps that case got bowed a little and it’s made the catch.
Hi,
The main reason why using distilled water is better than alcohol is that tea dissolves far far better in distilled water than it does in alcohol.
Distilled water is what our repair labs at work use, noting that they also have special drying equipment and also special cleaning liquids when used with ultra-sonic cleaners. The labs recommend against using alcohol. Their rule is try distilled water first, then move onto other things if that is not successful as other things are more likely to have collateral damage.
I suggest that one probably should not submerge the battery in anything. Just very very carefully clean it and then dry it with something absorbent and no more than gentle warmth. You can probably use squirts of ethanol if needed for any parts of it where water might be trapped in tiny gaps.
As to the ethanol or distilled water question for the rest. I think I’d avoid submerging in either unless I know there is a very serious problem that seems to be unfixable using less extreme means. Either can sometimes cause more damage and can be hard to get rid of completely afterwards.
It’s difficult. For instance, some parts can safely be dried by using quite a lot of heat, while other parts are delicate and can survive only relatively gentle warmth.
Mainboard replacement should do the trick although, if you have any shops nearby that offer motherboard repairs, it’s worth getting a quote to see if it can be salvaged.
Have your repair guys explained what their issue with alcohol is? Specifically 95+% alcohol. For people at home without special drying setups, cleaning agents or other equipment.
I don’t doubt that distilled water works better with their setup. People who specialize in something often become particular in how they do things, since when you do it hundreds or thousands of times, an issue that comes up 1% of the time starts to matter, or at least becomes annoying. Sometimes differences that are rather small in reality feel much bigger and more important. I know I’m guilty of falling into that.
Isopropyl alcohol is a polar solvent, same as water. No reason it should completely fail to dissolve anything that was in water & I haven’t heard of it failing. I’ve always seen it work far quicker and easier. And alcohol also has a non-polar end, allowing to bond to and remove non-polar compounds that water can’t. For anything that was suspended rather than dissolved in water, it should at least match the ability to remove that.
But no regular people own or will likely have access to special drying equipment or special cleaning agents. One needs to give a best option that people can actually do. And works out best with the equipment they have access to. If you search for how to recover from water damage at home, you’ll find 90+% alcohol recommended by experienced repair companies and individuals.
