Touchpad/UltraNav failure T42

[snabjab]

I spilled water near my T42 and a small amount ended up on the keyboard and palmrest. The machine was on at the time, but honestly it was such a meager amount that I didn't take emergency action and just continued using it.

The keyboard still works but the pointing devices have all failed. When I enter Access IBM and click on "Ultra Nav Pointing Devices" under "Configure", a pop up message says "Touch Pad is disabled in bios." Which, once I checked, turned out to be true. I enabled it in bios. but once Windows rebooted I found myself in the same situation. Neither the touchpad nor the UltraNav stick are working. Oddly enough, I hit the Access IBM button on startup and discovered that the UltraNav stick did work within the Rescue and Recovery menu.

Any ideas? Should I just let it dry some more and try again tomorrow? I have a USB mouse attached now and that's working fine.

[snabjab]

Well I had a bright idea that actually worked for once. I disabled the touchpad but not the ultranav in bios and sure enough, now the trackpoint works again. Really bizarre how so little water managed to destroy the touchpad. An old T42 lives on...

[T400plus]

You can console yourself.I burnt my motherboard for having a similar incident .I used the laptop
for 3 months after that ignoring, internittant erros once in a while.One fine afternoon it just smoked up .

[snabjab]

Yikes, well that's something I can feel better about, I guess. There's also the fact that I've had this machine since September '05, so I've obviously gotten my money's worth. It's a testament to Thinkpad quality that I'm still interested in using it. Hopefully the Sandy Bridge Thinkpads will be available soon and worth the money. Otherwise a discounted T410 or T410s would work.