Spilled ice tea on my laptop

[flixsmc]

So i accidently spilled a full glass of ice tea over my laptop and i immediatly turned it off. Then i grabbed a fiber cloth for screen cleaning and realised that wont be enough to absorb the moisture. I grabbed some toilet paper to absorb the moisture because it was the closest. So after 10 minutes when i had absorbed all the visual moisture I tried switching the laptop on but it didnt and after like 5 minutes I tried it again and it turned on and booted normally. I was relieved because I thought my laptop was going to be dead. Though 5 minutes later the screen glitched out and I thought I should turn it off. After that when I turned it on again it said "boot device missing or boot failed please insert a boot device and then hit any key to continue" or something similar to that. After that I tried opening the laptop and I saw that there were some small sticky stains.

I would appreciate if someone could help me figure out what parts of my computer are damaged and what I should do to fix my laptop.

 

[DarkEngine]

Ya this is not good. You had to dissect the unit / clean and dry it properly before turning the power back on as your Ice Tea went into every nook and cranny. There is a 99% chance it has serious damage. You have nothing to lose so I recommend taking it apart and cleaning so you know what to do next time. When you spill anything on hardware when the power is on expect the worst. The Sweet sugary Ice Tea is really nasty. One Time I dropped my cell phone in salt water. I took it home and put it in a bowl of rice for 2 days. I managed to retrieve the data on it before I threw it away. If you want to pay someone take it to you local shop. Maybe they can perform a miracle.

 

[Martell1977]

As said, take the system apart and clean everything. I suggest replacing the thermal paste on the CPU and GPU as well. When you have the system open, use a q-tip and clean off the pins that connect the HDD/SSD to the motherboard.

To clean things off, use isotropic alcohol, it will dry clean and quick. Wouldn't be a bad idea to use a hair dryer on low and with a little distance to make sure that everything is dry in areas you can't reach. NOTE: Do not get the dry too close as they can generate a static field and you don't want to get the too close.

5-10 minutes after spilling like that is nothing but time for it to seep in. If it happens again, open it up and depending on what was spilled clean it or use a dryer to dry it.

Once reassembled, try it again, if the same error, try a different HDD/SSD if you can or take it to a shop. When my Niece spilled Pepsi on her laptop, it ran but would shut off constantly, ended up needing a new motherboard.

 

[DSzymborski]

Yes, unfortunately, with a wet laptop, the time you want to be putting electricity through it again is measured in days, not minutes. Now it's a question of dissecting it, drying as much as you can (use alcohol to get off sticky things), and then waiting a couple of days before assembling and trying it again. If you're still getting just the boot device message, then you can try a new hard drive, though that's not a guarantee that something else isn't wrong.

 

[cryoburner]

There is a 99% chance it has serious damage.

It's possible that some connection is just shorted out in a relatively harmless way. If this just happened recently, then there's probably still moisture in there, and the system might potentially work after that's removed. It certainly may have caused significant damage, but I wouldn't say that's necessarily guaranteed. How long ago did this spill happen?

I agree with the suggestion to clean the internals with isopropyl alcohol. Ideally you should look for some with a high percentage of alcohol (over 90%, preferably in the high-90s) since it sounds like you might need to clean off circuit boards with it. The remaining percentage will be water, which isn't going to evaporate quickly, so something like 70% is probably unsuitable, and might cause more harm.

And be sure to remove the battery first! Also, after cleaning, you should leave everything to dry overnight, or perhaps a couple days, since you want everything to be completely dry before you reconnect power. There could be moisture hidden under chips and in other places that you can't see.