"Beverly Howard [Ms-MVP/MobileDev]" <BevNoSpamBevHoward.com> wrote in
message news:Oa91aD0$IHA.4528@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> Coffee, especially coffee or other drinks with sugar get ugly in a
> hurry... the last one I worked on one, I finally extracted the fact from
> the "spiller" that immediately after he knocked over the keyboard, 'there
> was a large spark under the "H" and "J" keys'
>
> When I dug into that area, a daughter board at that location showed
> considerable burn marks... I proceeded to pull his hard drive so we could
> at least salvage his data ;-)
>
> In this case, it looks like at least the key switches were contaminated
>
> going back further into the electronic archives of my past;
>
> a clear water dunking at least gives you some time and you _may_ get lucky
> with other liquids if they didn't create an electric short.
>
> The best approach is to remove any and all batteries and hard drives, then
> flush with distilled water, shake and blow out as much water as possible,
> then flush with pure denatured alcohol and do the same, then dry the unit
> with a fan and perhaps a strong light.
>
> Hard drives are sealed for dust, but not air and liquid, so, if the hard
> drive was immersed or doused with a significant amount of liquid, it's
> possible that liquid got inside with the heads and platters. get's dicy
> here, but I rotate and position the drive in all possible orientations to
> see if any liquid escapes... if so, will crack the case to get what I can
> out, fan dry, close it and immediately see if I can recover data using a
> usb box.
>
> However, in general with electronics, what happens is that water has
> already migrated into chip pads and legs so corrosion starts within the
> chips themselves as well as elsewhere in the device.
>
> I've managed to get a number of devices up and running following a dunking
> using the above, but in every case erratic problems would pop up weeks or
> months after the recovery, so, I now tell anyone I help with this to
> expect the device to fail and use the recovery only as a stopgap until
> they get a replacement.
>


I hope you charge big bucks.