Wet Laptop

[LilStilo]

well my mom had her dell laptop for 6 months and last weekend it was pretty hot we all got in the pool hooked the laptop to my mixer so we can play our song list on our outside speakers and well long story short it ended up getting wet by the water hose well i let it dry over night tried it out today i get one beep when i turn it on and i hear fans coming on but no display on the screen cany anyone help? any ideas?

[SeanC]

You should have let it sit for at least a week to dry out, at a minimum. If you could, open it up and remove as many parts as you can (document where everything is, where it goes, how it lines up, include ALL screws as well).

Anyway, if you can open it up, and remove most stuff, wipe any excess water out of the case to help prevent corrosion and rust.

Even if the system does completely dry, there's no guarantee that it will work after.

Regular computers are not designed to handle getting wet very well.

Now that this is out of the way, do you hear the hard drive running?

My initial theory is the system board or at least the onboard video component is damaged from the water. Or possibly the LCD screen itself.

Is it under warranty?

[LilStilo]

I do hear the hard drive spin my first thought was the screen was damaged i yea im thinking about rust i think im gonna disconnect and reconnect everything inside to see if that will get the contacts going again ive never seen the inside of one so this is going to be new first off though im going to attempt to connect a monitor to the laptop itself see if it does anything that way ill know its the screen...no its not under warrenty

[SeanC]

Yeah definitely try plugging in a monitor. If it is the LCD itself that's gone, it might just be worthwhile to get another laptop since the cost of the LCD is usually pretty high.

[LilStilo]

do they sell replacement lcd screens for laptops? well yea i hope its just a card that went bad and not the monitor itself altough something tells me its just the monitor that went bad im thinking about post testing it with my post card i never tried it on a laptop though im guessing the pci slots might be a lil diff since its a smaller case than a pc

[osprey4]

Yes, you can get a replacement screen from some third party vendors, but it's a bit early to be ordering anything. The warranty wouldn't help you in this case anyway.

Do you know what model this is?

[LilStilo]

Yea it is to early to be ordering first i want to see what it is hope its something minor i can find out waht model it is. yea the warrenty wont cover this

[dafanman]

LilStilo,

For what its worth.....

I recently had this happen to one of my clients, and after letting the laptop air dry for at least a couple weeks they found that there was a very faint display..allmost invisible. When hooked up to a monitor in my shop is was apparent that the only recognizable damage was to the display the rest of the laptop functioned normally when connected to a monitor.

In my research of the problem I came across this Laptop Repair Like her's it may just need a backlight replacement or something along those lines.

She has since gotten her laptop back and reports it to be working just fine.

Might be worth your time to investigate if when hooked up to a monitor the laptop works.

Good Luck!!

Laterz,
dafanman