This is certainly bad news, and the first thing to do is to disconnect laptop outlet (also unplug the Ethernet cable if you plugged it in) to avoid further harm. Do not unplug any other cables, remember that laptops have a battery and this means that if an internal short circuit has occurred you may get a good cramp by touching metal parts.
If the laptop continues to smoke, generate sparks, or even ignite, immediately evacuate the room you are in and Call the fire department. This is a situation that usually shouldn’t happen but of course there is a possibility and it is better to be safe than sorry. Either way, we are concerned that if this happens to you, you may ditch the laptop as lost as it will be quite difficult to fix it, and in the case of having it, it will be worth fixing it.
If, on the other hand, just after spilling the liquid, the laptop turned off (this is what should happen in most cases) but there was no explosion, spark or smoke is a good sign and can eventually be repaired.
You spill water or coffee and the laptop turns off (or not)
The most normal thing is that when you spill some type of liquid on the laptop, one of these three things happens (in addition to the pandemonium that we described in the previous section of this article):
- That absolutely nothing happens, the laptop continues to operate with apparent normalcy.
- That the hardware is blocked (this is the most normal), perhaps with an error on the screen, including a blue screen.
- That the equipment turns off automatically.
That the laptop hasn’t caught on fire, there is no smoke, and no small explosion has occurred is certainly a good sign, especially if the equipment still seems to be working fine. Either way, the first thing you should always do is turn off the laptop, unplug it from the outlet and the network, and if possible remove the battery.
So take a cloth or absorbent cloth and try to remove most of the liquid from the surface of the laptop. After that the recommendation is just to observe … leave the laptop, preferably on the cloth so that the falling liquid does it on it, without touching it for about 15-20 minutes. This will allow enough time for the liquid to drain out of the lower screens of the laptop and, moreover, to ensure that there will not be an electrical problem.
Once this reasonable time has passed, it is important to act relatively quickly (by this we mean not to leave this task overnight, the less time it takes to try to resolve the problem, the more likely it is to “resuscitate” the laptop. ). It again puts the emphasis on the entire exterior of the laptop, paying special attention to the bottom grilles, with the aim of draining as much liquid as possible. Gently press each of the keys, buttons and ports, and help yourself to listeners to reach the most difficult areas, making sure everything is perfectly dry.
Now comes the more complicated part, and as you will already assume when you see the image above these lines, that involves having to fully open and disassemble the laptop to dry and clean the interior. . Every laptop has a different way of accessing inside and disassembling components, so what we’re going to do next is give you some general tips for the process. Obviously, if for example the liquid has been spilled only on the laptop and has not touched the screen, you will not have to disassemble it (since in theory it will be dry).
- Remove all the panels and covers you can and clean them well inside and out.
- Unmount the hard drive or SSD and make sure to clean it well, especially around the connectors.
- Remove the RAM and, as with storage drives, clean and dry especially the connectors, including the sockets on the motherboard.
- For the motherboard use headphones, they are very useful for drying hard-to-reach areas.
- If it is possible to completely disassemble the heat sink (without the fans), put it under the tap without fear of cleaning it well (in case the liquid you spilled is not water) then dry – using a cold air blow dryer (most blow dryers have this option) and a dry cloth. Do not mount it until you are sure it is completely dry.
- For fans, which in laptops are always blowing, you will need to do what you can with the cloth and swabs.
The last tip that we are going to give you surely sounds familiar to you, because it is the first recommendation that they will give you when you have an accident with liquids on your mobile: put the laptop and / or its components in a container. closed with rice. This is not an urban myth or legend: rice is able to absorb twice its size in liquid, so if you put the laptop in a large, closed container with rice for at least 24 hours, it will help. to absorb almost all moisture. who can stay. If you can’t find a container large enough to be able to close it completely, nothing happens, but it is best to leave it for 48 hours.
Una vez hecho todo esto que te hemos indicado, ya solo resta volver a montarlo todo en su sitio, ponerle la batería al portátil (es recomendable usar la batería y no conectarlo directly a la corriente en esta primera vez) including if enciende y funciona no problem. Unfortunately, if this is not the case, we are concerned that you have already done everything possible to fix the problem and now only have to take it to a technical service so that the components that may have been damaged can be replaced.
