1 post tagged “spill”

    Coming home from my physics exam, feeling pretty good, I decided to kick back and have a beer.  No I wasn't drunk, I had to finish my MA 162 (calc) homework.  I ended up finishing it around midnight when I was packing up my bag for tomorrow, I tried to get a book out a pile of papers/binders/books that totaled about a foot and a half high.  As you could imagine the skyscraper of my college career fell over onto the laptop which was sitting on the desk next to it. One of the books in the pile ended up hitting the right side of the keyboard, making the enter key fly off (broke a tab that held it on and now it doesn't sit correctly anymore).  This is just my luck of course it being the enter key, it couldn't be the shift key, which I have two of, or any other key....After the massacre of one of my most important keys, the rest of the avalanche shoved my poor laptop into my beer, dumping rest of my Samuel Adam's Boston Lager into the left side of my keyboard, going into the fan/processor area.  I absolutely freaked, and as the computer shut itself off, I feared the worst. 
   
    Immediate surgery was in order.  First was the detox, sitting the laptop on its side open to drain all the liquid out of the fan area.  Then the removal of all 14 screws on the bottom, one under the battery, and one for the cd drive.  The top fascia covering the speakers was then ripped off, leading to the 4 screws holding the monitor on, 2 screws to remove the now sticky/damaged keyboard.  Lifting off the top of the case, the fan was soaked, so I tried to dry it with paper towels. I then removed the HDD, and then moved on to disconnecting all the connectors for keyboard, wifi antenna, right and left speaker, fan, biometric reader, touch pad, and monitor.  I finally got the motherboard free and propped it up at an angle on the edge of the laptop frame.  A wipedown of all components was completed, and then air dry time.  I then plugged the fan back in and decided to boot without anything else connected.  The fan started up!  I let this dry for about 15 minutes like this and then connected the screen to see if it really still worked.  The monitor worked! Next step connect HDD, keyboard, touch pad, speakers, and hopefully seeing the windows startup screen.
    
    With my laptop in pieces, seeing the "Windows has recovered from a critical error" was one of the best experiences I have ever had with Windows errors, or maybe even the best Vista experience (huge error on Microsoft's part).  It is now fully assembled, and fully functional (except for the enter key and slight hint of beer smell)  Thank God they designed this laptop with the processor on the bottom. 

Patient: Toshiba Satellite A205-S4787

Symptoms: Concussion, broken enter key, alcohol poisoning

Owner's Symptoms: Mild heart attack

Treatment: Complete disassembly/drying and cleaning parts

Complications: Enter key still doesn't sit properly (maybe I can rig it up somehow)

Complete surgery time: 2 hours
(I have modded this laptop so I pretty much know it forwards and backwards)

Results: Up and running