What's the best way with a water-damaged laptop?

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sorcerer

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A customer is going to be dropping off an HP 430 laptop this afternoon that has had about half a pint of water spilled on the keyboard (and no doubt it went flowing nicely onto the motherboard and other internals too).

Apparently, pressing the power button makes the power LED come on but nothing else happens; no fans or drives spin up, no display on screen.

I've never dealt with water damage before - where do I even begin? I should say that I only work out of my tiny spare bedroom and have no access to things like ultrasonic cleaners and suchlike. I have a can of contact cleaner but that's about it. Oh, and an aerosol can of Isopropyl Alcohol too.
 
I have a less than 6 month old Macbook Pro on the bench right now with liquid damage. See image below. And that liquid was cat urine. After telling the client a new logic board was needed at the cost of $350, not including labor ($280) but free data recovery as I was able to view all the files and could easily get her images she wanted, she got furious at me. So she tells me no that I was ripping her off with the cost and that she is going to call the nearest Apple store as I "was not qualified" to work on it, even though my site and signage says differently and her co-worker recommended me to her after I fixed her Macbook at half the cost of Apple. She calls me back very angry at the fact Apple told her they would replace the board, for $750, because they do not fix them (which I knew that) and recover her pictures for an additional $450. So her $1300 laptop will cost $1200 to get fixed by Apple, and I AM THE ONE ripping her off?

I offered her a solution. I'd sell her a used A1278 just like hers for $400 and put her pictures on it for just $150. Have yet to here back from her.

Some customers can be a bit of a PITA.

Edit: forgot the image. I need more coffee. :rolleyes:

20161213_191801.jpeg
 
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Your PCMD said:
but free data recovery as I was able to view all the files and could easily get her images she wanted, she got furious at me.
Click to expand...

No good deed goes unpunished. I'd still charge for the data recovery in future , even if it's just for half an hour labour. Your time is valuable. Especially when you have to deal with customers like this!

Kudos on staying calm!
 
@nlinecomputers I totally agree with you. Once she has it back, fixed or not, I won't be taking anymore of her business - if any - in the future. Shes already been placed on the blacklist in my CRM.

@ZenTree she doesn't know it yet, but even if she doesn't want me to fix it, she still is going to have to pay bench time of $180. That will go over well I am sure. I can keep calm but still enact revenge. :D
 
sorcerer said:
A customer is going to be dropping off an HP 430 laptop this afternoon that has had about half a pint of water spilled on the keyboard (and no doubt it went flowing nicely onto the motherboard and other internals too).

Apparently, pressing the power button makes the power LED come on but nothing else happens; no fans or drives spin up, no display on screen.

I've never dealt with water damage before - where do I even begin? I should say that I only work out of my tiny spare bedroom and have no access to things like ultrasonic cleaners and suchlike. I have a can of contact cleaner but that's about it. Oh, and an aerosol can of Isopropyl Alcohol too.
Click to expand...

Where to begin is to take it and look at it, while setting the appropriate expectation that repair is unlikely and you're primarily evaluating the data-recovery probability. If it turns out to be reasonably repairable, then you're a hero. If it's not, the customer won't be surprised.

I've seen many water damaged laptops (small spills, not floods or full immersions) that weren't economically repairable but the data on the hard drive was fully recoverable by mere mortals. As long as not too much liquid was spilled, the various layers of keyboard, tray/case, motherboard etc, shield the drive from direct contact. Again, this is for spills not immersions.

As others have hinted at, unless it's an expensive high end laptop, you don't bother repairing them. Even if it were an expensive laptop, I'd still think three times before recommending repair. IMO, a liquid damaged laptop remains a time-bomb even after it's "fixed". Something that seemed to work fine at first may fail later as time and corrosion take hold.
 
Not worth it on PC laptops. Schematics too hard to find, if not impossible. The best you could hope for is that you clean the board and it powers on, but then dies or has other strange failures that you will waste days and days trying to figure out because you're holding out hope that it's not dead components in the motherboard.

Take the hdd out, toss the rest in your to-be-recycled pile.
 
Cat urine ? Thats a data recovery job ONLY or they can hit the bricks. I remember the time a guy came in with a laptop in a bag that had vomit on the keyboard. HIS VOMIT. He didnt bother to tell me until he removed the laptop and opened it up. I told him its a hazmat job and we dont do that. He was shocked as he was willing to pay "extra" for the job, extra was $100 including repair. :rolleyes:
 
Your PCMD said:
Are you sure about that?

And this?
Click to expand...
Yep. I'm sure.

Neither of those had a schematic for his laptop. There's maybe a couple hundred hp laptops on those sites, when there's thousands out in the market.
And a service manual is not a schematic. I'm talking about a diagram of the circuitry down to the level of resistors and capacitors and such.
I think one time out of 20 did I find a schematic i needed for a laptop that a customer brought to me. That's hours and hours wasted.
 
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