Thinkpads Forum

I'm a bit accident prone you see. [I was just drinking milk and got it on my glasses.]
Long story short, coco puffs + milk spilled on keyboard. I immediately held it upside down, and patted it dry with a towel. This was at night; I turned it off and went to bed.
The next afternoon was the next time I held the T60. It turned on and seemed functional. Until this point, it was probably fine. I did not like how the keys were sticky, so I washed off the keyboard with water [here's the dumb part*] while on and running from the battery. Now it won't boot. Before buying a new motherboard I wanted a 2nd opinion. I removed the keyboard, both drives, memory and all cards, and left the T60 alone to dry for two days. It still will not turn on. What do you think has failed?

*I now know the first thing to do is to pull all power sources and remove said part with cereal on it.


Update:

After 2 weeks of drying out it works again but the keyboard has bit the dust. Tried last night [no memory inserted], got the memory beeps, tried adding memory and it didn't beep. Tried again tonight, and it worked before and after memory was inserted.

Allan Mankato wrote: What do you think has failed?

Brain cells.

Well duh, I know that. Drain bamage.

Most likely there was water on the mainboard while the mainboard was under electricity. In this case, the mainboard is defect. It is possible, that other parts of your notebook are also defect.

If I would be in your situation, I'd buy another notebook. Sorry to say that.

Remove all power (battery, powersupply), and take off the keyboard and let it sit for a couple of days (while you are under the keyboard, check if there is any obvious signs of spill damage, if there are you have a couple of options to try - what is below or just replace it.

From this point on it is YMMV, there are no guarentees/warrenties/promises that it will work, only the fact that it has worked for me to clean up a couple of systems that had very bad spills on them. If there is residue on the motherboard, I would do a complete tear down, and rinse the affected parts with "distilled water" (if you are feeling brave and have good city water i.e. not hard water, I have just used that rather than distilled), rubbing very gently to clear everything off. After that, let everything sit as long as it takes to completely dry out, the reassemble it and cross you fingers. It should power on then, but if it doesn't, give it another couple of days and try again. I was too impatient with my first system I cleaned, and it took it a week to fully dry - this is a waiting game, no a instant gratification. If you have hard water, then you should probably wash the parts with distilled water since it is not the water that causes problems, it is what is in the water.

Another thing to remember for spill recovery is that you do not flip the system over - just let it sit and the liquid will run out under the keyboard, away from anything important. If you want to turn off the system, unplug the system and take the battery out without tipping the system at which point you can hold it over a sink/bowl... untill the liquid has gone through, and then take it apart and clean what needs to be cleaned.