Water Damage - Toshiba Equium p300

Hi, Just been handed this Toshiba laptop and told there was a small spillage onto the keyboard. I took it apart and there is not much sign of damage, a slight stain on the underside of the keyboard. I reassembled the laptop and it booted to desktop and then died. It booted again later into safe mode but again died. It is not getting hot,and i blew out the fan earlier. I can't get it to boot again, i tried removing the keyboard earlier and attached a usb keyboard but it died shortly after. Is this a sign of shorting on the motherboard? What else can i try? Any help would be welcome.

Anything to do with spillages is a toss up as to damage, the major factor is how soon you shut the power OFF, remove the battery and totally isolate it for ALL power, the greatest mistake is returning power too soon, "IF" it was able to be recovered, but was powered on too soon, you can completely kill it, it takes much longer to dry out than people would realise, and all this is before you start taking into account exactly what was spilled, as that also has a major influence on any damage. The golden rule(s) are:- 1. Remove ALL power (including battery) as fast as you can. 2. Next lay something like a tea towel on the keyboard, close the screen over as much as the screen allows, then turn it upside down, this may seem silly, but it minimises how much fluid enters the actual system board etc, as in this position gravity makes it flow into the tea towel, again the danger is not allowing long enough for the fluid to dry out, and turning it over too soon could put fluid back into the system again, so give say a good 48 hours like this, then turn it onto one end (adjust tea towel as needed), so it's vertical, also open the screen a bit so it's like a V shape to get good air flow round it, this way fluid will hopefully run down onto the tea towel again and not into the board, again give a good 24 hours like this. 3. Find out just what was spilled, and what they did after, if they kept trying to power on and the like they may have killed it, and with these thing there is no clear answers, only best advice and a good amount of luck, but once it is dry you may need to dismantle it, if it was pure water you may not feel the need, as once evaporated it should be gone, BUT, coke\beer etc, these have all sorts of sugars or worse in them, and can leave a film on the board, and even if dry, the film "could" cause a short circuit, and fry the system, these need to be "washed" (use proper PCB cleaning products for max safety) then dried again, then once your happy all is cleaned, and completely dried, you can put it together again and fingers crossed it will fire up, but don't hold your breath, depending on the varying factors it is a toss of a coin if you get lucky. Some may say this is too much, and may have got away with far less messing, and they may well have, it all depends on what was spilled, and how fast they acted after, and what they did straight off, the above is kind of belt and braces, and presumes the worst case, but each individual case will vary, but anyone blind reading for help we have to assume advice is for worst case, to maximise their chances, and just because no signs of wetness being visible after turning etc, it doesn't mean that there could still be enough dampness to cause condensation if powered on to soon, and it's amazing how long damp can last. The guide is the same for mobile phones as well, only difference is size, and being small can be aided in drying by dry rice in a bag with the phone to absorb moisture. But once the majority of wetness has gone, you can dismantle the system, and this speeds up drying time as moisture has less places to hide, but still avoid the temptation to turn it on too soon because it "looks" dry, moisture can hide behind the tiniest gaps. Once the above has been done, it's lottery time, one or all of the components can of been damaged due to this, so it's a case of slowly checking each part in turn, if it fires up then it's part way there, after this it depends on what happens as to what to do next, you have the usual trying a single stick of ram etc, and obviously while the system is stripped down check for signs of burnt parts, burnt electric smell, blown\bulging components etc, any signs of this then it's probably game over, at least for that part, but whether the other parts are ok or not you would need to test those in a working system, hope this gets you started at least, and good luck.

Well i left the machine for a few days and i have just booted into safe mode and restored it back to the oldest date available. Then when it rebooted into normal mode it ran for about 5/10 minutes and died again. I cant reboot at the moment,it seems to need time disconnected before it will restart. I tried switching the ram sticks etc and no joy. Does it look like a lost cause?

The fact you were able to fire it up shows a glimmer of hope, and I doubt system restore would make much difference, that would only help if the OS had been messed up or similar, but never hurts to try.

When you power on are the fans running ? Can you feel any air being pushed out from the system, if not it may be a heat issue, which would also fit with shutting down the way you describe, the problem now is the system staying on long enough to check things, lets try and see if you can install and run WhoCrashed (it's the 4th section down, currently v4.01), see if you can get that installed, ran, and save the file before it crashes, save the file to a thumb drive and post it here for us to see.

Now the ram, have you tried swapping sticks ? so if one crashes try the other, also try other slots, it will help check if the slots and\or ram have a problem, if you have access to a system that can take that ram, you can put them into that and run memtest, but it may take a while to show up any issues, if any at all.
And out of interest, after doing this, does the system crash if in safe mode ? If it's a temperature issue you may need to make the system work to produce the effect, see if any of this shows any clues.

I have the machine taken apart again and i cant see any signs of damage,the board components appear to be ok,no sign of staining anywhere. There is a very small,faint line of white dusty residue in one spot which i have removed with hand sanitizer and a toothbrush,seems like nothing but you never know. Apart from that i see nothing. When i powered up the machine a few days ago,the fan was spinning,i had previously blown out any dust from the fan. I cant remember if it died in safe mode but i think not. I will check when i reassemble. I tried swapping the ram sticks and no joy. Should i remove the heat sink and maybe reapply thermal paste while i am in here? I will try and instal and run WHoCrashed when i reassemble.

Well given the amount of time and trouble it is to reach that point, it certainly wont do any harm, and dependant on age it may be advisable anyway, but needless to say, take anti static precautions, and use a good thermal grease remover to get the previous stuff completely off, it's not wise to mix old with new as it could make matters worse, and I hope you removed the CMOS battery, as even the power from that can cause problems, probably not a bad idea to replace that at the same time, mainly because access to this on a laptop is probably a major task, and a bad CMOS battery can have you jumping through all sorts of hoops. Now TBH you should NOT of used that to clean the board, ideally you need a proper electronic PCB cleaning solution, I don't know any names, or which may be best, but a decent hardware place should be able to recommend a decent product, but using ANY kind of cleaning solution is not a good thing, you really need to know what the chemicals etc. within a cleaning product can do to electrical parts it's not worth the risk, because nearly all can leave a film after cleaning, and the film can cause shorts, so even if the parts were saveable before this, using the wrong solution could be the death blow. The safest alternate cleaning solution may amaze you, but it's water, not tap, but distilled, as it is pure, and will not leave a residue, the danger point with water as a cleaning solution is where you started in the first place, drying it, again time and care needs to be taken, and don't make the mistake of putting power back into it before it has fully dried, so a good 24 to 48 hours, maybe use some compressed air in short bursts to push out liquid that "may" be hidden behind chips etc. But with all that lot aside, using a toothbrush again is a bad idea, I can't blame you for using\thinking of that, but it may be too abrasive for the delicate PCB, you should really use micro fibre cloths dabbing with them, but the residue you saw may well be what caused this, and there is no way to find out what damage, and if it does fire up, again there are no scans to check for any side effects of it's spillage, you can only keep an eye out for issues that could arise as it starts being used again (assuming it gets this far), and if future troubleshooting proves the other parts are good, then the only thing left is the board and CPU, fingers crossed for you.

Well after all of that no joy,so i am gonna have to give up on this one. I think where spills are concerned,in most cases users will not disconnect from power sources (mains and battery) quickly enough. They will also try to restart the machine many times, not letting it dry out. So i would hazard a guess that a recovery is rare in these circumstances and hardly worth spending a lot of time on. I very much appreciate your input and your advice,thank you for that.

Yes the users own actions after such a disaster really does have a massive influence on the end outcome, I had a mate ring me last year with the same situation, one of the kids had spilt a drink on the laptop, but because he rang me straight away, and I was able to get him to do the above straight away, he was lucky and it started working again when they fired it up 3 days later, but there is no way to guess what will happen in these cases, some turn out ok, others are ok with say new ram, but often it's fit for the bin, but you always have to try, as you can get lucky, all you can do now is spread the word on how to react should it ever happen again, also warn of "mates" of who know what they are doing, often it is luck that such people stumble on, but there is never a guaranteed outcome at such times.