Comments on: So You Spilled Water on your Laptop…

By: JG

JG — Sun, 05 May 2013 21:18:11 +0000

I just spilled a least 2 cups of water over my laptop. I quickly got my pillowcase and dried the excess water on top of the laptop. Then I held it place upside down, while the water inside the keyboards dripped. I dried the keyboards again, and shut it down completely. I flipped it over and took out the battery. Thank goodness that it was dried, so I placed it back in, and turned on the laptop. Until now its working as if I never spilled anything on it. I’m wondering that maybe it wasn’t enough water to damage it, idk but im glad i didn’t mess it up.

By: Liz

Liz — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 07:59:53 +0000

Right now you are the absolute only folks who have given me any hope. I spilled a few drops of seltzer water on my laptop. I didn’t worry until I saw that they were on the touch pad. I wiped them off. 30 seconds later the laptop just turned off – no smoke, no smell, no zpptt sounds. My first resonse was to try to power it back on, but nothing happened. I checked the socket and the ac adaptor, but there weren’t any problems. That’s when I started to panic. At this point my laptop is upside down in a v with the battery taken out. I do not know enough about hardware to do anything else. I will wait until the morning and pray – a lot. A recent divorce has left me struggling financially and I can not afford to replace my laptop. At least, I know there is hope. Thank you.

By: Tawanda

Tawanda — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 13:00:43 +0000

Yesterday, spilled a small amount of water onto my T61 keyboard, system immediately shut off and I panic’d. So, at that point it wouldn’t turn back on, so I made sure there was no more water draining out and just let it sit. Hadn’t read a post like this before my incident, so I was looking for any help in the Lenovo Troubleshooting book. Later that night, I pulled the battery and put it back in and the laptop came on to my surprise. So, I took the battery back out and left the system the rest of the night, doing a backup now and will let it dry out some more. Hopefully, I’ll have a full recovery with no issues. Thanks for this post.

By: taco demon baby chocolate

taco demon baby chocolate — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 08:19:28 +0000

thank you.i hope this works!

By: Tablet Advice

Tablet Advice — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 21:41:04 +0000

Thank you so much for this post. I think it just saved my daughter’s Dell netbook.

By: Scott Reston

Scott Reston — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 21:14:15 +0000

ThinkPads are known for their decent water-handling. Dell? Not so much…

But the rule of thumb (with ANY electronic device) is to make sure it’s 100% dry before you turn it on. Getting wet doesn’t ruin a laptop. Powering it up while wet is what shorts it out and kills it.

By: Annu

Annu — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 20:23:28 +0000

My dell laptop was in vertical position, closed inside bag..somehow water from the bottle entered laptop. When I took out the laptop, water was on the keyboard, monitor and at the junction between monitor and keyboard. I tapped them dry, then i switched on (was not knowing anything hw to handle that situation)..cursor was behaving crankily for a while, now whenever I switch on laptop, cd drive will eject out automatically…i didnt dare to open up the laptop..now I am scared what will happen..

By: Roisin

Roisin — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 00:15:59 +0000

This is weird, because we have the exact same laptop, and this was the very first thing to be found on google of the matter.
So I only had some drips of water, but some of the water slipped through the keys, and I was worried as hell! Thankfully, and I do not know about strange coicidences, but my sister had unplugged the computer out of selfishness, because she wanted to use the socket, so that was no issue, and it was already lying flat in the first place, so that was great, and it didnt even stop working or anything. I actually didn’t notice the water dripping for a while, because I was distracted, I had it playing music and it didn’t even stop! I’m using it to comment right now, and this was like, twenty minutes ago. I feel like I really dodged the bullet here..
Great post, thanks so much, it helped a lot, and I thrilled to hear about the drain holes! That was the cherry on the cake

By: Kim

Kim — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 18:29:11 +0000

I feel so much better after reading these posts and wish Gateway was as considerate with design and/or technical support. I just dumped a full glass of water on my laptop. I unplugged it, removed the battery, and dried as much as I could. I attempted to remove the case but some of the little screws were so tight that they wouldn’t budge. It’s drying in an upside-down V now. I contacted Gateway technical support and as soon as they checked my serial number and found out that my computer was out of warranty, they refused to offer any advice or assistance. I am now hoping and praying for the best. I kept meaning to back up those thousands of pictures of my son and never did get around to purchasing an external hard drive. I am kicking myself for being such an idiot.

By: jose

jose — Tue, 10 May 2011 02:24:47 +0000

just wanted to say thank you for the calming and helpful blog post. this just happened to my hdx 18 and was frantically looking for information on the internet. My back up was current so was mainly worried about repair cost.

As people said, don’t panic, remove power fast, remove battery fast. Don’t shutdown, just remove the battery asap.

Depending how well you are with putting stuff together, you may or not want to disassemble your laptop. Gave it about 10 hrs to dry.

Thankfully mine came back with no problem. Left shift key seemed to get stuck at first, which was problematic for entering passwords, but became ok after a few hours.