A small drop of coffee …
p2pnet news view P2P:- On Saturday I posted, My Lenovo 3000 N200 laptop fan starts, stops, and the system won`t boot. The power light goes on and then off when the fan stops. I tried it without the battery. Same thing.
And now —-
—- OK. I admit it.
My computer was fried because a I spilled a small drop of coffee on the keyboard.
Like, there was only a splash in the bottom of the cup and it didn’t seem a big deal.
And the keyboard seemed to be virtually self-contained so I didn’t think anything had been able to leak into the motherboard.
I left it overnight thinking if anything had somehow gotten into the works, the amount was so little it would’ve dried.
Obviously, I was dead wrong.
Anyhow, after two long trips to the big city on Saturday and Sunday, I now have a new laptop I didn’t want — especially in the circumstances — couldn’t really afford, and didn’t need.
And I’m presently going through the pain of trying to get everything back to the way it was (things still are still very far from the way they should be).
Need I say more?
Thanks to everyone who gave me advice and suggestions, especially to Scaramouche over in Australia for whom it was around 3:00 in the morning.
It’s been an adventure, but one I definitely could have done without. 
At least the coffee wasn’t Caffé Raro.
Cheers!
Jon
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
September, 2009
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September 21st, 2009 at 8:39 am
Why do you even have liquids near your equipment? Accident waiting to happen.
September 21st, 2009 at 11:10 am
No worries mate…
Coffee is absolutely normal, i see that very often in my shop. The worst two laptop liquid spills, ive ever encountered in my career have been human vomit & cat urine, now thats absolutely freaking NASTY.
September 21st, 2009 at 11:16 am
I did some research and settled on a Fujitsu, a top-quality brand which incidentally uses spill-proof (to 50 ml) keyboards.
But laptops have become dirt-cheap lately, Best Buy last week was selling a 15.4″ for $300, a price well into netbook territory.
McDonalds puts warning labels on its hot coffee, for the sake of people who either don’t know or need to be reminded that spilling hot coffee on themselves can burn them (as well as making them $$millions richer). I propose that those cup warning labels be expanded to include the dangers of spilling coffee on laptops, keyboards and other electronics.
September 21st, 2009 at 11:17 am
P.S in my previous much hated job for a large multinational IT equipment company (who I will not name), we used to have drinks every friday, & one of the girls spilled her beer into a customers laptop. Funny thing was that it belonged to a government department who we had a multi-million dollar contract with, even funnier was that we had just finished fixing it & funniest of all was that they were on their way to pick it up, did a motherboard & keyboard change in 15 minutes while pissed, hehehehe those were the days…
September 21st, 2009 at 11:22 am
Readers Write
Fujitsu dont make them, ive come across the laptop I think your talking about rebranded as a Mitac, Fujitsu & some other generic no name brand which i cant remember. Identical hardware chassis, different manufacturer labels, OEM was either a Mitac or Clevo if my memory serves me. The keyboard in that model has got a plastic drain going vertically through the chassis which channels any fluid out the bottom of the laptop
September 21st, 2009 at 12:45 pm
It may have actually dried by the morning. However, the chemicals in the coffee can react and/or conduct to effectively ruin your laptop.
Heck, you never know, if you take it apart and clean it properly and carefully with isopropyl alcohol, it might just come back to life.
September 21st, 2009 at 12:50 pm
To clarify: take apart the laptop and clean the motherboard and connectors. After this, if the keyboard doesn’t work properly, take that apart and clean the contacts, but be careful with that alcohol, as it may attack the plastic used to make the keyboard – it all depends on the kind of plastic.
September 21st, 2009 at 12:50 pm
@ Cynix:
Worth a shot, certainly. For now, OK so I’m an idiot, butI didn’t just leave it. I carefully mopped the coffee I could see with tissue, and thoroughly blew the keyboard with an air duster.
Meanwhile, there are still few things I need to do to get back up to speed,and I lost a lot of data.
Cheers!
September 21st, 2009 at 1:05 pm
The hard drive should still be intact (probably) from what you describe. Go get a cheap hard drive enclosure and you may be able to rescue all of your data.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3743049&CatId=2777
September 21st, 2009 at 1:08 pm
PS if you do get an enclosure, most laptops (all I have seen anyway) take the 2.5″. The 3.5″ enclosure is usually for a desktop hard drive.
September 21st, 2009 at 2:11 pm
@ EE:
I’m finishing early today because that’s excactly what I’m going to do — entailing another trip to the Big City /sigh
Cheers!
September 21st, 2009 at 5:02 pm
It’s never a total loss so long as you learn something valuable from the mistakes you make in life. Remember as well that no matter how bad things get, they can always be worse. Now that I mention it, I better do that backup I’ve been putting off for several weeks now.
September 21st, 2009 at 5:30 pm
I keep telling my wife and kids the danger of eating and drinking around the computer, maybe your tale of woe
will help them understand why I complain. Sorry to hear it took out the lappy on you, better luck next time, ehhh??
And yes, get an enclosure, I’m sure all your data is safe on that drive.
September 21st, 2009 at 5:55 pm
“no matter how bad things get, they can always be worse”
Quite right. I always remind myself at least once a day that disaster can strike at any time without warning. heh
Cheers!
September 21st, 2009 at 10:27 pm
The spill was quite unlikely to affect the hard drive, as HDDs are normally located at the bottom of the notebook pc and are fairly water resistant and probably the last component to be affected.
Often easier than trying to extract settings and data from an enclosure-encased HDD is to boot the new PC with the old HDD. A new computer can often be run using the old pc’s HDD installed if both drives are built with the same interface (either IDE or SATA); only the hardware drivers need to be switched out for optimal performance.
Or just put the old HDD in the new PC and boot it in safe-mode and it might work well enough to copy bookmarks, email, lists, etc. That’s what I would try as a start. Other than easily-replaced components like memory and hard drives, taking apart a laptop can be fairly complicated operation, generally not recommended for the mechanically-challenged. Except maybe those in the “got nothing to lose” category.
Jon, I wonder if writing the (apparently-banned) word — Giganews —- guarantees that you’ll read this post?
September 21st, 2009 at 11:01 pm
@Mozy.com I always say Thank you!
September 22nd, 2009 at 9:26 am
@ RW:
“I wonder if writing the (apparently-banned) word â Giganews â- guarantees that youâll read this post?
”
Sorry – I don’t understand what that means or what it has to do with my coffee spill.
Cheers!
September 22nd, 2009 at 3:52 pm
While you’re at the computer store, see if they have a “keyboard condom” that fits your laptop. Failing that, get a roll of Saran Warp.
September 22nd, 2009 at 4:12 pm
It’s a kind of a trick I’ve employed, useful on popular, heavily-commented blogs, to insure that a comment that otherwise might be overlooked gets read by the blog author. On many blogs posted reader comments will get queued for approval (instead of being posted directly) if they meet certain designated conditions, such as being over a certain size or containing a URL address.
Blog owners often don’t have time to read every comment, especially when there’s hundreds, but it seems they usually read queued posts sooner or later. And if a comment is intended for the site’s author rather than the general readership …
Here at P2PNET it seems that any post submitted containing the word “G-I-G-A-N-E-W-S” (minus the dashes) can take several hours before it shows up, so apparently that word is on a banned word list, and the comment is put in a queue for approval instead of being posted directly. The same thing probably happens for obscene words on the banned word list, though I’ve never cared to test that myself.
I’ve run into a few cases in which a company has threatened suing a website due to critical comments posted in the forum by visitors, and the site responds by deleting all critical posts and putting a keyword ban on the company’s name. (I’m not trying to imply that’s the same situation with p2pnet)
Since the comment posted above containing the word “G-I-G-A-N-E-W-S” (minus the dashes) did not show up until the next day after it was posted, is it not safe to assume that it is (for reasons unknown?) on the banned word list?
But back on topic ——- I wanted to make a point that often the easiest and most complete way to save data from the hard drive of a dead pc is to boot the new pc using the old hard drive rather than attaching it as an external USB device, as others here have mentioned. Hope that helps.
September 22nd, 2009 at 7:09 pm
@ RW:
Giganews is a ex-advertiser and I was having a lot of trouble with someone who didn’t like them, and who was posting long anti- diatribes. I put it on hold so I don’t log on in the morning to find a whole bunch of dross to deal with. I’ll take if off sometime soon.
Otherwise, I make a point of trying to read every Reader’s Write and re-post quite a few as stories.
Cheers!