Red wine attack

[SPIKE2k10]

My mum spilt red wine on her T41, she said a whole class hit screen first, took battery out and stood on its side over night but wont switch on, obviously dead but what parts may have survived?

[SPIKE2k10]

anyone know what part may of survived please

[killer]

Sorry to hear about your problems. ThinkPads are reasonably good at removing water spills. Red wine is tricky because it is viscous, contains sugars, and is acidic (tannic acid) ... similar to tea or coffee.

You did well to remove the battery and, hopefully, you unplugged the machine from the mains. (You did, didn't you?)

I suggest you get a high quality philips screwdriver and remove the keyboard. There are three screws on the base marked with what looks like an image of a keyboard. Once you have done this, look inside for signs of damage. You can remove the RAM module and see if that is clean.

Then please report back.

[Neil]

If the wine ran down the screen and into the keyboard area up around where the power button is, then the hard drive and optical drive might have survived. The system board is probably toast, the keyboard is likely gummed up beyond saving (but maybe not), the battery might still be good, but could have shorted out and killed a cell or two. RAM might still be good but could well have been damaged. LCD screen is likely to still be good, but will require disassembly and a good cleaning, before testing.

Bottom line...wine is really bad for a computer.

[killer]

I find it scary that a whole class attacked the screen.

[SPIKE2k10]

Well after being told it was 2 glasses of wine!!! I just took DVD, hard drive, keyboard, both memory out and strangely dusty looking not wet and sticky!!!

there are a few signs inside but keyboard isnt sticky, I think the wine must of just managed to hit the right spot to short it out, I'll know more soon as I have another machine I can test parts on.