Thinkpads Forum

There was a water spill on the table onto which I'd put powered off but plugged to power source the X201. When I tried to power it on, it only flashed lights and showed nothing but blackscreen. It's been a couple of days, but my X201 only flashes lights and immediately turns off (even no BIOS screen, no fan spin).
Any advice?

To be honest, things don't look good in your case. Water is the biggest enemy of electrically-powered devices, so you must be 100% sure it's dry before even thinking of turning it on.

The first thing you should have done is unplug the power, remove the batteries (CMOS/RTC battery included), disassemble the laptop, and let it dry, for days if necessary. If you can wipe off the water, do so, but be very careful not to damage any component, and be wary of electrostatic discharge as well.


...But since you already went ahead and pressed the power button, it's highly likely that irreversible damage has been done and you'll probably need to look for a replacement board to get it up and running again.

Looks bad but you can always try this:
Take battery out and disassembly it by this guide https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvL5SAVHD4U
1. Take it apart carefully, take keyboard off slowly so you wont snap the cable, you can use someting plastic to help removing cables from connectors
- After drying motherboard look for corrosion on it http://www.mycrazymachine.com/mcmblog/l ... ircuit.jpg
- Use 70% or more isoprohyl alcohol to clean it, with q-tip or clean toothbrush (GENTLY) ofcourse powered off and remember to remove cmos/rtc battery aswell before this
- You can also dip whole motherboard into isoprophyl alcohol if you have enough of it, let it dry for awhile before trying out.
- When you test it first time, you can try it without anything connected (only ram) and ac power it will boot without keyboard if you have cmos battery removed. If you see fan spinning you can assembly more parts and try again ( could be someting shorted like lcd or keyboard )