James Hunt explores your options for when water-related disasters strike
Everyone knows that water and electricity don't mix well, but what does that mean if you spill something on your computer? We've all had near misses with drinks, be they soft or hard, warm or cold, in a bottle, mug, beaker or glass. If it hasn't happened to you already, one day a near miss will turn into a direct hit. But does that mean the end of your hardware, or is there anything else you can do to salvage it?
The good news is that you've always got a chance of sorting your system out. And over the next few pages, we'll tell you everything you need to do to put your waterlogged hardware back on the road to recovery.
Drying Out A Keyboard
This most frequently encountered mishap is, by chance, one of the easiest to deal with. Spilling a drink into a keyboard might ruin your day, but quick action and some painstaking recovery means you can, at least, stop it from ruining your week.
To begin with, your priority is to ensure that the liquid doesn't cause any immediate damage. Disconnect the keyboard from your computer and hold it upright so as much liquid drains away from the surface as possible. The way keyboards are built means it's difficult to get water inside the keyboard itself (it'll probably collect in the key tray), and even if anything does get inside, the large membrane that covers the sensors will probably stop any serious damage from occurring.
Nonetheless, once you've drained out the most immediately accessible liquid, you'll have to take the painstaking step of removing the keys so you can dry underneath them. Prise the keycaps off using a flathead screwdriver or other thin implement and place them to one side. You might want to take a quick photograph of their layout for when the time comes to replace them!
Once the keys are removed, dry out the key-tray. This isn't going to make a huge difference to the keyboard's electrical functionality, but it's hygienic, and if you've just spilt any liquid with sugar in, then it also means you won't sit down at your desk one day to find a parade of ants marching through the office. Plus sticky residue might cause the keys themselves to stick, which would get annoying.
When the key tray is clean, leave the keyboard to air-dry overnight before replacing the caps. This should allow any water that made it into the interior of the keyboard to evaporate. When you're happy that it's dry, replace the caps according to their original positioning (or not, if you want to see how good your typing is). The keyboard should work normally once you plug it back in. Remember to test every key!
If it doesn't work once you've dried it out, the problem might be that sticky residue made it onto the keyboard circuitry and is shorting out some of the connections. If this happens, your only option (besides buying a replacement) is to disassemble the keyboard and wipe it clean. Unless you have a particularly expensive keyboard, this is almost certainly more hassle than it's worth, but if you want to give it a go, it's essentially the same process as drying out a laptop. Speaking of which...
Drying Out A Laptop
Spilling a drink onto your keyboard might be annoying, but it's even more of a problem when that keyboard also houses the rest of your system's main components. Laptops are great for portability, but that very quality means they're more likely than ever to find themselves on the floor or sofa where drinks might get spilt. And if the worst happens, you have to act fast.
The first thing to do is power down the laptop immediately. Try to do it properly if you can, to avoid the risk of damaging your storage, but it's more important to cut the power quickly than it is to shut it down safely. Usually you can shut the system down quickly by simply holding down the power button.
If the AC adaptor is plugged in, remove that first of all, then flip the laptop over and pop out the battery (you may need to disengage a lock lever to get to the battery).
The problem here is that most liquids will conduct electricity and cause the circuits to short, which could produce any number of effects. Hardware damage is possible, and data damage is likely, so you want to get the system to a safe, unpowered state as fast as you can.
The next thing to do is flip the laptop over (assuming it was keyboard-up at the time the spillage occurred). For obvious reasons, you probably shouldn't do this on your carpet, but if you've got a towel or other large washable cloth nearby, that's a good option. If you have any accessories or peripherals attached to the system, remove them as fast as possible.
The idea here is to make sure the liquid cannot travel deeper into the system. The most important and hard-to-access components are located at the base of the laptop, so you must stop the liquid trickling down through it as much as possible. Turning the laptop upside down might mean liquid collects in the keycaps or behind the touchpad, but that's far preferable to having your CPU and RAM drowning in wine.
Once the liquid has had time to drip away from the innards, you may want to tilt it around a bit to pour out anything that remains. Keep the laptop inverted until nothing more is dripping out.
This is where things can get tricky, because you need to get into the interior of the laptop to dry it out. Armed with lint-free cloth and some paper towels, crack open the laptop case and begin to soak up as much liquid as possible. It's best to dab rather than wipe so you don't scratch, dislodge or snap any interior components or circuity.
If any components are removable, such as the keyboard, RAM and hard drive, you may wish to remove them to check that liquid hasn't gone all the way through into them. If you have to clean the motherboard, remember to remove the CMOS battery - it resembles a large watch battery and provides a small current to the motherboard at all times. Removing it will delete your BIOS settings, but these shouldn't be hard to autodetect once the system is working again.
Once all obvious visible liquid has been cleaned up, it's a good idea to put the system to one side so it can dry off. Depending on the type of liquid you spilled into your system, you may have to go back in and clean it more once it's dried off -water might evaporate completely with no ill effects, but soft drinks are likely to leave a sticky residue that can still short out circuits, and acid can cause a gradual corrosion which can damage a system over time.
Keep in mind that touching the interior components of your system requires you to have antistatic protection. At the very least, discharge yourself by touching a metal radiator. An electrostatic discharge is just as, if not more, deadly to a system than spillage, and a dry cloth can be a source of static build-up, so be careful. If you're worried, stick to paper towels.
Removing the dried residue can be done in a number of ways. If it's not sticky, compressed air might help. If it is, dab it with a very slightly damp cloth. You can use de-ionised (chemically pure) water or isopropyl alcohol to safely clean circuitry, but try not to let it get into mechanisms such as CD drives and hard drives.
Once the components are clean and all the liquid has been dealt with, let them dry once more, then reassemble the system. When drying a system, it's important not to expose it to direct heat - leave it in a well-ventilated and/or warm room for 24 to 48 hours so any liquid you missed has a chance to evaporate.
If liquid got into the AC adaptor, don't try to dry it out - instead, replace the unit entirely. The high power levels it channels makes it far too great a risk compared to the cost of replacing it.
Never use a hair dryer or fan heater to dry out a system - in addition to blowing dust around your system and possibly melting components, the moving air and dust can cause static build-up, which (as previously discussed) can be incredibly harmful to electrical equipment.
When the system is as clear as possible, only then can you switch it back on. If the equipment is undamaged then it should boot as normal. If not, there's a good chance that the hardware was permanently damaged, and you may have to seek a professional repair job or replacement.
If your system is working again, it's a good idea to create backups in case gradual corrosion causes damage to occur later on. Having your data backed up makes any failure easier to deal with. It's also worth running diagnostics, memory analysis and stress tests to check whether any minor damage has occurred to the system. At least if it has, these procedures should bring it to light before it becomes a problem.
If your system hasn't started working again, it might be worth checking the warranty. Some warranties include provisions for spill damage, though beware that if you've opened the laptop already this might void an otherwise applicable warranty.
Drying Out A Smartphone Or Tablet
The ultra-portable nature of smartphones (and, to an extent, tablets) means they're more vulnerable to water damage than almost any type of hardware. Friends of Micro Mart have managed to drop their phones in the sea while paddling, had them slip out of a pocket directly into the toilet and, in one ill-fated case, managed to place a phone directly into a half-finished cup of tea while half-asleep in bed. There's no end to the circumstances under which such devices can end up waterlogged.
Smartphones and tablets are just as complex as laptops, but because they're smaller and sealed, there's only so much you can do to dry them yourself. Regardless of what anyone tells you worked for them, don't put your device anywhere near anything too hot like a radiator, hairdryer or (god forbid) an oven. Too much heat risks warping and melting components, while a hairdryer will force moisture deeper inside the system. Instead, follow this simple procedure.
First, as with all waterlogged electronics, deactivate your device immediately. If it's currently charging, pull out the cable. The longer the device is active and wet, the greater the chance of damage occurring. This is the most important step -if you leave it longer than a few seconds, the hardware has a huge chance of being shorted out and permanently damaged, and if that happens, then none of the remaining steps have any chance of working.
Once the power has been cut, dry the exterior as thoroughly as possible. Take out any removable parts, such as the SIM card, battery and any memory cards and dry those too.
Next comes the important step: place the device in a resealable bag along with a desiccant material such as silica gel. You can use rice grains in a pinch, but silica gel is better because it's capable of actively absorbing large amounts of moisture. Remember: do not eat the silica gel. You only need a small amount of silica gel in the bag, but if you're using rice, put as much in as possible. Now seal the bag to ensure that the gel draws the moisture out of the device rather than the environment around it.
Now place the bag in a warm environment and wait. Most advice suggests that you wait at least a day to ensure that the device is fully dried out, but the longer you leave it the better the chance of the moisture being completely dried. Try to rotate its position every few hours just to make sure no water is getting trapped inside. If you're lucky, eventually your phone will be completely dried out, and when you try to turn it back on, everything will be fine. If it doesn't work, put it back in the bag and wait longer. If it doesn't work after three or four days, you're probably out of luck.
The sad part is that even if your phone comes back to life, you run the risk of corrosion further down the line. The chance of this is higher if the water contained sugar, acid or salt, which will eat through circuitry, but a dunk in any liquid will increase the chance of it occurring. Unfortunately, unless you're comfortable opening your phone to give it a thorough clean (something which is more likely to damage the hardware than anything), you'll have to accept this consequence.
It's also worth noting that a dunk of any length will void your warranty. Most mobile devices, especially phones, contain an internal indicator, which changes colour if it comes into contact with liquid. If you submit your phone under warranty, the manufacturer will check this indicator and refuse your request if it has been activated. Annoying, but understandable.
The good thing about these methods is that they're all general enough that they can apply to other hardware too. Anything from a digital camera to a desktop system can be brought back from a watery grave by applying the same techniques. In case it isn't obvious, don't risk drying out PSUs, transformers or other high-voltage electrical equipment - but everything else is fair game. And next time, maybe wait until you're out of the bath before reading that email?