Dell Resources

March 11, 2005 8:45 AM

Several days ago, my daughter dumped a bowl of cereal onto (and into, some) my Dell laptop. I have been trying to determine if I should just get a new one, or if this one is salvageable. . .it turns on, but is not sufficiently functional at this point. I have exhausted all of the online info that I know if, including Dell's knowlege base. I am not looking for tech support here, but does anyone know of a forum, or non-Dell knowlege base, or such, that they trust and find exceptionally helpful?
posted by Danf to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

but is not sufficiently functional

Can we get a little more of a description of what the problems are with the laptop? With the provided information above, almost anything can apply.
posted by chrisroberts at 8:54 AM on March 11, 2005

Response by poster: I was hesitant about getting specific tech help, since you asked:

I took the key board out and cleaned and dried stuff as well as I could.

1. Upon boot-up there is about 20 seconds of loud beeping, then Windows goes ahead and boots up.

2. The keyboard does not respond at all.

3. The touch pad moves the cursor around, but then when double clicking on certain programs, an adjacent program will sometimes launch.

4. At times, the start highlights will move up and down wildly. . other times it works OK.

5. Programs, such as spybot, appear to function fine.

So I am wondering if investing 20 bucks in a keyboard will be a good move, or whether I have deeper problems.
posted by Danf at 9:14 AM on March 11, 2005

Best answer: My guess is that it is salvageable only because of my own experience with my sister's Dell that she poured coffee into. It wouldn't start at all. We replaced the motherboard [not cheap but we had a donor laptop that had had other problems] and it functioned fine. If you are getting that level of functionality out of your laptop [i.e. mostly mouse/keyboard interface options] my guess is that you haven't trashed anything major. The beeping could easily be your laptop saying "hey I have no keyboard!!" Try an auxilliary laptop/keyboard if you have these laying around and see if that doesn't solve the problem 100%. Also, to your main question, I had a very hard time finding other reasonable sources of information about this problem when we had it.
posted by jessamyn at 9:22 AM on March 11, 2005

Best answer: Remove power to the device.

Remove affected parts, which sound like just the keyboard and touchpad modules.

Take a shallow tub or pan, and fill with distilled water.

Wash affected parts in this pan by submerging them and moving them around.

Pour out water, let the modules drip dry.

Pour 90% or greater rubbing alcohol into the pan, repeat submersion and drip dry.

Place modules on dry paper towels in a sunny area for at least one day - two days if you live in a humid area.

Re-assemble modules into laptop.

The wonkiness of the trackpad is probably due to some moisture still inside the module. The non-responsive keyboard is probably also due to moisture-induced shorts.

I advise the water rinse first to get out the sugar out.

The alcohol rinse will mix with the leftover water and evaporate faster.
posted by tomierna at 9:29 AM on March 11, 2005

A caution about using rubbing alcohol: many brands also contain lanolin, which is an oil and probably not good for electronic components.
posted by Daddio at 9:45 AM on March 11, 2005

lanolin in rubbing alcohol? Sounds like that defeats the purpose of rubbing alcohol, what will the sell next humm?
posted by edgeways at 12:04 PM on March 11, 2005

I had the same experience...with orange juice. I immediately popped the battery out, disconnected the power, and took paper towels and dried as many visible parts as possible. I then took the laptop apart and further dried the parts. When booting back up i found the sound and keyboard to be disengaged. I traced it to orange juice which had dried at a connection point between ribbon cables. I undid all the cable connections and seatings between boards and cleaned them throughly with a MILD alcohol and water solution. Let everything sit to dry under a low heat lamp for 4+ hours, then put it all back together, making sure to reconnect critical connections several times to ensure a solid seating.
posted by omidius at 12:35 PM on March 11, 2005

To avoid this problem in the future, ensure your serial port is unclogged.
posted by five fresh fish at 7:19 PM on March 11, 2005 [1 favorite]