Advice needed for a HP laptop repair

[gregbradley]

I clumsily knocked over a cup of tea and it spilled underneath a HP Pavillion laptop. It didn't go on top of it just underneath. It was running at the time. It shut down and now won't restart although the blue lights light up for a second when you hit the power button.

I cleaned of a small amount of tea from the hard disk cover (covered in plastic and seems watertight).

I take it some tea got in underneath the body and has wet something and perhaps left a stain.

Is this something onl HP can fix or any suggestions for a home fix?

Greg.

[multiweb]

Got an electirc oven? Take the battery off, leave it there on very low temp for 3h or so. Then power up again.

You need dry heat like an etuve.

[jenchris]

grab your screwdriver set and strip it down, use demineralised water and a tissue to clean all sticky off it and allow to dry - reassemble.

[ejd]

I agree with Jennifier, clean out any gunk and make sure it is absolutely dry before installing the battery or powering on.

The HP website should have manuals for the correct procedure for opening the laptop along with information on interpreting power-on self test led readouts.

If you have trouble finding the information let me know the model number and I can search some non internet accessible databases for it.

[ZeroID]

Strip and wash, dry and pray ... in that order. Obviously some liquid has got into somewhere critical, keyboard membrane, or main board and the acid in the tea is causing electrical leakage. If it hasn't been washed out by now it's probably dead forever as it will corrode under the chips, connectors etc.
I fix, rebuild laptops all day and I've seen it all before.
If it's an older latop, more than 2 years forget about it. Cost of a mobo or components will exceed the value. Buy a new one.

[jenchris]

I had my own PC company a few years back, and I've not seen one cola'd laptop that lasted more than a few weeks no matter how well it was cleaned. Usualy they were fried instantly.

With Tea you may stand a bit more of a chance, but I doubt it will be reliable from now on - even if you're not already too late.

[Barrykgerdes]

I haven't had any bother with coffee or tea on keyboards but I did have trouble with a mouse that got inside a PC. He had been dining on Ratsak for some time and left the results befor he went seeking food elsewhere (I eventually caught him/her/it in a trap).

No obvious physical damage to the motherbourd other than the filth but it still could not be revived. I ended up with a new motherboard and used the old processor, memory, HDD's and plugins for a complete recovery. ( except the new video has lousy openGl2 drivers and no updates yet)

Barry