What if you have a situation of liquid spillage on your laptop? Anybody would freak out. Spilling a drink on your laptop does not necessarily have to be a freak out moment and may not necessarily need a replacement of your device only if you know what to do and how to act quickly.
If something like that happens what you must do you at that very instance are some of the points that we have covered below. So let’s find out about liquid spillage on laptops.
Turn the device off: when you accidentally spill liquid on your laptop, the first thing that you must do is switching off your device because if you fail to do so and your machine is left on for even a few seconds then you may cause a short circuit leaving the component inside with permanent damage. You surely don’t want to do that. Hence, the quicker you turn off the more are the chances of your machine getting saved. In the next step going to remove the battery. Remove any USB drive or dongles plugged into the laptop so that you are sure that nothing is trying to draw even a trickle of power from the system.
Turn it upside down: another thing that you can do is take a dry cloth and wipe off any excess liquid from the surface of the device, especially near the keyboard area, vent or ports. Also make sure to open the lid as far back as it will go so that the water can dry off. You can also turn the laptop upside down and put it over the towel or an absorbent cloth. People who are not comfortable with opening the laptop need not experiment with the same but if you are comfortable then at least remove the back plate and wipe off the components with a lint free cloth. When you remove all components of the laptop make sure to examine each and every component you removed to check for any signs of wetness or corrosion as in that case a wet part needs to be dried thoroughly. But if in case the liquid that you spill was not water wipe it off using a clean toothbrush dipped in 90% isopropyl alcohol as this would dissolve junk without causing any damage and it smoothly evaporates without leaving a residue.
Refer a repair shop: once you have performed all the above mentioned steps now you can look back at the laptop and turn it on. Most of the cases your device should boot back up. As far as our wise advice is concerned, we would recommend you to get it properly checked by a professional repair shop as there may be chances that something that works after you dried it off doesn’t mean it is fixed. This becomes even more essential if you spilled on your device something other than water like soda or coffee as they are likely to leave damaging residue behind. A good repair shop will clean the components with help of a powerful solvent.
Among some traditional methods to dry off your machine you may either choose to hold your machine upside down or you may also go for putting your laptop in a big sack of rice but beware that popular pieces of advice have many substantial problems. First, a material like rice may not come in as handy when dealing with liquids that may have sugar, alcohol or other substances besides water. Second, rice doesn’t efficiently absorb moisture trapped deep in your components which can actually cause problems. Third, you must know that rice has a lot of microscopic flakes of debris that can get inside the laptop and cause even more harm to the device.
Conclusion
As far as the pandemic situation is concerned and you may not be in a condition to visit a repair shop and are still in a situation like this then you just need to let your device ventilate and dry out for at least a day before you turn it back on yourself as if you attempt to power it up too soon you may invite disaster. Hence, for a liquid spillage on laptop condition it’s better to make wise decisions to save your machine from uninvited problems.