I recently spilled some wine near my laptop and some of it got under the machine. I cleaned it quickly as best I could but there has obviously been some contamination.
Everything is functioning normally apart from the following issues -
the power indicator light no longer goes out when the laptop is powered down although it does dim
the speakers won't cut out when I connect my headphones
Is there an obvious fault suggested by these symptoms?
Thanks in advance.
Update today (05/12):
The power indicator light is flickering but mostly off when the laptop is on.
The speaker/headphone function has swapped around i.e. the main speakers have stopped working but the headphones now work!
Sorry to hear about the wine incident
No, the symptoms you describe are not indicative of a particular fault…
If the wine has entered your laptop, then the damage caused depends to a certain extent on the immediacy of the remedial actions taken, and the depth and scope of the cleaning process.
In broad terms for a reasonable prognosis, the strip down, after turning off and removing the battery should commence within a minute or two of the liquid ingress. Any later and it's likely to be bad news.
Provided you performed a complete strip down (right down to the motherboard) and cleaned thoroughly all the circuitry, components etc with distilled water using a new cotton bud (Qtip) for each "stroke" and then allowed the machine to air dry, for several days before starting it up… then there is hope…
However,
Acidic substances (like wine) are highly corrosive and unless removed promptly and thoroughly will start the processes that will cause the laptop to fail….. it can take up to 12 months for the corrosion to kill the machine …but quite likely, kill it eventually….it will.
When we are presented in our workshop with a machine that has suffered a similar fate, we try to discourage the customer from having the work done (as the work cannot possibly start within a minute of two)
Faced with an insistent customer we get them to sign a disclaimer and to confirm in writing that they have asked us proceed with the clean and understand that the medium to longer term prognosis is poor…. we guarantee the clean for 30 days only.
The strip down and cleaning cost on most laptops can be quite high as we usually take around 3 hours for the work ( including the reassembly) labour costs being what they are it's not an inexpensive procedure.
We usually recommend a complete check on all their back ups to ensure that everything that needs to be kept has an effective back up, and that it is reproducible, comprehensive, and suits their needs…… and that purchase of a replacement laptop will be ( most likely) the best course of action.
It's been a couple of weeks since the spill and I don't have the knowledge to strip the laptop down and clean it so, I wasn't able to do that.
In summary, what you are saying is that eventually the laptop may die due to corrosion. Hopefully, this might be limited to the speaker functionality and I already use an external hard drive to store all the stuff I want to keep so, I should be fine with that. The laptop is only 3 years old so I'll see how it goes.
. but do be meticulous with your back ups