[Hardware] Have you spilled water or coffee on your laptop? Save it with these steps

[Dark]

In these times, teleworking is the order of the day, and it is quite common to have the first (or second, third…) coffee in the morning while you start the working day on your laptop. For this reason, it is quite common for accidents to happen and for you to spill coffee, water or any other liquid on your precious laptop. If this is precisely what has happened to you, do not be nervous because below we are going to tell you what you should do to try to solve the problem or, at the very least, minimize the possible damage.

If you spill liquid on the laptop, surely all the alarms go off, so the first thing is that you do not get nervous and evaluate the situation. As in any emergency, time is crucial, but it is better to have a rational thought to be able to act as a consequence of the symptoms that your team presents after the accident.

Sparks, explosions and smoke ... the liquid has damaged your laptop
Laptop on fire

This is certainly the worst situation in which you can find yourself ... if after spilling the liquid on the laptop, sparks have started to come out, there have been small explosions or if smoke comes out, it is a sign that there has been an irreversible failure in the hardware , potentially on the computer's motherboard and / or power supply.

It is certainly bad news, and the first thing you should do before anything else is to disconnect the laptop from the power outlet (also disconnect the Ethernet cable if you had it connected) to avoid greater evils. Do not disconnect any other cables, remember that laptops have a battery and that means that if an internal short circuit has occurred, you run the risk of receiving a good cramp when touching metal elements.

If the laptop continues to smoke, generate sparks, or even burst into flames, immediately evacuate the room you are in and call the fire department. It is a situation that, generally, should not happen, but of course there is a possibility and prevention is better than cure. In any case, we fear that if this has happened to you, you can give up the laptop as lost since it will be quite difficult to fix it and, in the case of having it, it will be worth it to fix it.

If, on the other hand, just after spilling the liquid, the laptop has turned off (this is what should happen in most cases) but there have been no explosions, sparks or smoke, it is a good sign and possibly can be fixed.

You spill water or coffee and the laptop shuts down (or not)
Liquid in laptop

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 have described in the previous section of this article):

That absolutely nothing happens, the laptop continues to function with apparent normality.
That the equipment is blocked (it is the most normal), maybe with an error on the screen, including a blue screen.

Let the equipment turn itself off automatically.
That the laptop has not burst into flames, that there is no smoke coming out and that no small explosion has occurred is certainly a good sign, especially if the equipment appears to continue to function well. In any case, the first thing you should always do is turn off the laptop, disconnect it from the power outlet and the network, and if possible remove the battery.

Next, get an absorbent cloth or cloth and try to remove most of the liquid from the surface of the laptop. After that, the recommendation is to simply observe ... leave the laptop, preferably on top of the cloth so that the liquid that falls does so on it, without touching it for about 15-20 minutes. This will be plenty of time for the liquid to drain through the lower grates of the laptop and, in addition, to make sure that there is not going to be any electrical problem.

Once this reasonable time has passed, it is important to act relatively quickly (by this we mean not to leave this task for the next day, the less it takes to try to solve the problem, the more likely it is to "resuscitate" the laptop). He re-emphasizes the entire exterior of the laptop, paying particular attention to the lower grilles, with the intention of draining as much liquid as possible. Press gently on each of the keys, buttons and ports, and use ear buds to reach the most difficult areas, making sure everything is perfectly dry.