as i mentioned in my for sale thread, my aspire one got wet and is now broke. it was on standby in my watertight messenger bag, and my waterbottle came open filling the bag with a good litre of water . it seems to be totally bricked, when i plug it in no lights come on, and the power button doesn't do anything. i have taken it apart and other than a little white crust of oxidation on the hard drive enclosure there is no visible damage. is there any hope for it? do you think if i cleaned the oxidation off the hard drive enclosure i could send it back on warranty? i couldn't possibly have picked a worse time to wreck my laptop. not only was it the day after i decided to sell it, i also had all my history notes from the semester on there, not backed up anywhere, and i wrote my history final this afternoon.
Open it up if possible and put it in a warm, dry place. Either in an airing cupboard or near a radiator. Hopefully the act of seeing if it still works didn't fubar it.
You might be able to whip the hard drive out and get the data off it. If you've got the flash drive, I'd say it's near-100% chance of being recoverable. They're remarkably hardy against damp. (Ever washed a pendrive?) Otherwise just bung it in the airing cupboard for a couple of days and see if you can dry it out.
Alcohol and a toothbrush is your friend here. Take it all apart and give it a good scrub to remove any oxidation. Then let it sit for a few days (A couple of weeks may be necessary). If you haven't gotten any water into the display it could still work. edit: Don't take apart the LCD panel, only the plastic cover/bezel.
you might try that electronics cleaner.. it sprays like a liquid and evaporates off- I've used it and it works pretty good to clean off boards you could also take the board and stick it in the oven afterwards lol @ like 200 degrees, I know it sounds crazy but it might work- the drive maybe tricky, but you might be able to recover the data.. use something like a blow dryer on it instead of the oven after a good spraydown with the cleaner
Isopropanol / Isopropyl Alcohol? Never thought of using it to clean the board itself (not that the board needs it atm) just for cleaning CPU's when reseating.
this stuff http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2102649 it's basically like using alcohol but it's compressed.. sell it all over the place- should be able to find it locally
What this is and what you need to look for is "Contact Cleaner". This stuff has been around almost as long as me. It was/is used by the electronics geeks to clean contacts on mechanical relays. Another product that works well to clean printed circuit boards is a child's pink eraser or the eraser on a wooden pencil. Jist make the contacts shiny again and don't give up yet. john
Definitely the way to go. My dad is a watchmaker and he uses this for quartz watches when water leaks in. After observing this, I usually use it to clean excess thermal compound on PCs with no problem what so ever.
Not sure IF this works (ie ive not tried it myself) but ive heard dry uncooked rice soaks up moisture very well (Ive heard this used with "wet" mobile phones". May be worth putting it into a bag of rice for a few days?
okay, so i pulled the hard drive out and it works fine. the rest is still dead. one time i plugged it in and the orange light to indicate battery charging came on, but then immediately blanked out. subsequent tries at plugging it in nothing happened. i've had it totally torn apart for a couple days now, i'm pretty sure there's no moisture in there anywhere. the CPU and chipset are soldered in and surrounded with epoxy, the ram is soldered on, i'm not sure what contacts there are to clean.
The problem is all the moisture hiding under BGA ICs. The capillary force in water is strong enough to keep it there for a while.
so are you saying i should just let it dry out a bit more, or is moisture under the ICs a death sentence?
It could be if you turn it on. I have seen computers that have been stone dead from moisture, but which have come to life all by themselves after a few weeks (From 1-8 weeks). This is why alcohol is a good idea. It mixes with the water and force it out, leaving only alcohol behind. Alcohol is non-conductive and evaporates much faster than water. You could also try to put it in an oven as thehippoz says, but be careful not to get it too hot and heat it slowly. About 50-60 degrees Celsius should be enough (Look in the manual, find the maximum operating temperature, add about 10-20 deg and you should be fine). 200 deg. is way too hot. You may get it dry quickly, but at those temps the soldering will start melting. Plastic will also start to deform badly. Leave it for a couple of hours. Don't do this to the LCD, though. They normally don't like heat very much.
