Oops spilt a part gass of lager near Laptop

steve higgins · Post by **steve higgins** » Sun Mar 28, 2010 6:34 pm

The laptop is an acer aspire 5315 did'nt think any lager had gone into the laptop but when I turned on wouldn,t boot up and I get 2 messages 1 Media test failure check cable and 2 no bootable device insert boot disk and press any key.unfortunately dont have any discs.Any chance anyone can help me or will I have to write the laptop off.Cheers Steve.

dave.m · Post by **dave.m** » Sun Mar 28, 2010 6:51 pm

steve,
If it had just got onto the keyboard, it would have been easy(?) to clean but as you are now getting error messages and unable to boot, it sounds like it got inside too!

Without knowing your capabilities with computers, just sticking to the basics for now.
You can help your self to start with by getting a spray bottle and filling it with clean warm water. Rwemove the battery and disconnect from any mains supply.

Turn the laptop upside down over a sink and spray the water all over the keyboard to try and remove as much of the sugary beer as possible.
Then place the computer upside down onto a towel and let it drip dry. That may take between a few hours and a couole of days. A blow with a WARM, not hot, hair drier will speed up the process a little.

Once it is completely dry try it again and if you still get the errors, try plugging in a usb keyboard and see if it boots up.

If the errors still show then it looks like a trip to your local computer shop, (not PC World) and see what the guy says.

dave

Simon Site Manager · Post by **Simon Site Manager** » Sun Mar 28, 2010 7:19 pm

I second never going to PC World, numpties the lot 'em.

S

kellys_eye · Post by **kellys_eye** » Sun Mar 28, 2010 7:24 pm

Sounds very much like either a HDD failure or the ribbon cable/connector to it has come loose.

HDD failure is pretty terminal but since the HDD is usually accessible through a door on the bottom of the lapdog, getting it open and checking that the connector is fully seated should take but a few minutes.

The Weegie · Post by **The Weegie** » Sun Mar 28, 2010 7:44 pm

Dave see when you say that if it got into the keyboard it might be easy?

Could you expand a bit further please.

My brothers laptop got white wine spilt onto the keyboard. The laptop works fine if there is an additional keyboard attached to it. It is just the keys on the laptop that aint working.

I want the laptop off of him to give to the kids.

dave.m · Post by **dave.m** » Sun Mar 28, 2010 7:54 pm

If some of the keys work and others don't, then it could just be that they are sticking and so the warm water treatment should get the dried wine off the back of the keys.

If none of the keys were working then it could be a connection inside, either come lose or got wine on the terminals and they might need unplugging and cleaning.

Not too difficult a job if you are confident to do it. Open the back and look for the wire connectors that conect to the motherboard. Unplug each one in turn and check if it is clean.

dave

dave.m · Post by **dave.m** » Sun Mar 28, 2010 7:58 pm

Steve,
As kellys eye said, if you feel confident to open the back up and have a look inside, try removing the cable connectors one at a time and see if they have got some lager on them. Wipe the contacts on the motherboard with a cotton bud.

dave

wine~o · Post by **wine~o** » Sun Mar 28, 2010 8:58 pm

you know why the OP hasn't been back of course.....

Lager and Laptops..not a good mix

kellys_eye · Post by **kellys_eye** » Sun Mar 28, 2010 10:09 pm

Switch cleaner should NEVER be sprayed into a membrane keyboard. The 'contacts' are usually conductive carbon circuits printed onto a plastic membrane and 'some' switch cleaners leave a residue that can interfere with operation more often than not.

Keyboard replacement is relatively straightforward and spares can be found on eBay cheaply.

Once a keyboard is compromised you almost never regain 100% operation 100% of the time.

dave.m · Post by **dave.m** » Mon Mar 29, 2010 4:38 pm

kellys_eye wrote:Switch cleaner should NEVER be sprayed into a membrane keyboard.

Thanks for that pointer, ke, I had never realized that.

Cheers
dave

steve higgins · Post by **steve higgins** » Mon Mar 29, 2010 5:57 pm

Hey up I am back just sobered up when I spilt lager it was a bit away from the laptop and did not touch the keyboard but soaked into table cloth under laptop when I removed battery mother board and hard disk there was no sign of any lager in the compartments and everthing seemed to be plugged up ok.oh well may have to write it off thanks for all the replies slur slur,cheers(oops at it again)SteveH.

steve higgins · Post by **steve higgins** » Mon Mar 29, 2010 6:24 pm

would it be worth trying downloading a vista boot up on to a disk to another computer and inserting into my broken one and pressing any key as it says on my srren

Cheers Steve

chat_to_rich · Post by **chat_to_rich** » Tue Mar 30, 2010 9:09 am

You could remove the disk from the laptop and plug it into another computer as an additional drive. Your laptop drive will appear as another drive, e.g. e:\ and you can copy off any files etc. It looks like your laptop hard drive is SATA, so you'll need a spare SATA cable.

kellys_eye · Post by **kellys_eye** » Tue Mar 30, 2010 2:22 pm

Not sure what manufacture your HDD is but I've had numerous difficulties with HDDs - the spindle motor driver chip goes dud on one phase (the motors are three-phase stepper) which stops it spinning up.

I've had 'some' success with the following technique though.....

Remove the HDd and place it on a radiator or somewhere reasonably hot.

Allow it to get 'hot' - almost to the pint of uncomfortable. Bear in mind that heat destroys magnetism so you do run the risk of losing ALL data (but since the HDD is 'dud' anyway you've not got a lot to lose!) so don't leave it too long.

Quickly reinsert it into the lappy and fire it up. Most times it works - but have a decent sized USB data stick available to download all the really important stuff off your HDD as it most likely won't like what you've done to it

HDD failure seems to be more prevalent now than it ever was (I don't recall any of my old HDDs failing) and this may be because of cheap chinese production which is why I now pay over the odds for my 'main' HDD and use an off-the-shelf one for general don't-care-if-I-lose-it data.