Coffee in Laptop

Steve@Advance · Jan 16, 2015

Got a call from my wife this morning... Daughter spilled a whole cup of coffee in the new laptop. Of course they had to try it to see if it would come on before they called me! It didn"t ...

Had them unplug it and pull the battery. I"ll start disassembling it when I get home. I saw that 99% isopropyl alcohol is good for drying and cleaning the sugary residue. But can I buy that? Thinking it was controlled. Would fuel deicer work?

Wish me luck!

87nassaublue · Jan 16, 2015

Gosh, that's a mess. An IT guy's worst nightmare. LOL I've been an IT manager for a long time. I wouldn't use any solvents like alcohol or anything else. Disassemble it and take the parts that have coffee and sugar on the over to the kitchen sink and start rinsing. A mild detergent if needed, like dish-washing soap will help. Shake them off as best you can, blow them dry with compressed air, a hair dryer, a reversed vacuum cleaner, etc. Unless the hard drive got trashed or the coffee shorted something, hopefully you will be ok. I've done that a number of times. Electronics are much more durable than you might think.

guido · Jan 16, 2015

Hello Steve@Advanced,

Bury it in rice, and hope for the best.
Low air pressure would dissipate some moisture before you do that, Good Luck......

Guido.

old · Jan 16, 2015

Yep rice and maybe a blow drier on low heat. Found out coffee cups and open cups do not belong close to electronic stuff and in the navy you could get in big trouble for doing that

JMOR · Jan 16, 2015

If really lucky it didn't get past keyboard & into a powered up motherboard/power supply. It did in wife's laptop & several ICs showed burned leads! Finished!

Low voltage/high current still smokes tiny leads!

Indiana Ken · Jan 16, 2015

(quoted from post at 15:41:16 01/16/15) Got a call from my wife this morning... Daughter spilled a whole cup of coffee in the new laptop. Of course they had to try it to see if it would come on before they called me! It didn"t ...

Had them unplug it and pull the battery. I"ll start disassembling it when I get home. I saw that 99% isopropyl alcohol is good for drying and cleaning the sugary residue. But can I buy that? Thinking it was controlled. Would fuel deicer work?

Wish me luck!

Yes, you can buy 99% isopropyl. It is hard to find, the last I bought was on line. however, last week I was in our local ACE hardware and they had it in stock - amazing - I had looked in every pharmacy etc.

SweetFeet · Jan 16, 2015

There are drying kits (desiccants) for hearing aids. One brand is (or at least used to be) Hal-Hen pellets... comes in a small jar.

Wonder if it would work/be helpful, if you get the majority of the moisture cleaned out, then put it in a sealed bag with maybe 3 jars of those pellets dumped into the bag.

Steve@Advance · Jan 16, 2015

Well, got the laptop apart. It was prety nasty, some of the sugary goo made it to the motherboard. Looked like it was fried, some of the goo looked like it had gotten hot and bubbled up. I took some dish soap and water on a q tip and cleaned it up, dried it with some alcohol and a paper towel. Looked a lot better. Washed the keyboard under the sink faucet, blew it out with the compressor.
Letting everything dry overnight before final assembly, I'll see what happens tomorrow...

Coffee in Laptop

Steve@Advance

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87nassaublue

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guido

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old

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JMOR

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Indiana Ken

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SweetFeet

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Steve@Advance

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