laptop- water spill. help please

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VertigoGal

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i spilled water on my mother's powerbook G4 that she uses for her livelihood. this is a rather dire situation. :|

i unplugged it, wiped it down immediately, and have left it overnight. it still won't turn on at all. it was making sounds before but now it just does nothing, and it won't turn on.

is it completely shot? if i wait a few days is it still drying out- is there a chance? is it possible i could replace a damaged part or that any of the hard drive can be salvaged/transferred/whatever? should i take it apart? take it to the store?

help me. :(
 
Do not turn it on again. Open the screen, and flip it upside down for at least a few days. There's a chance that it could work again. Luckily, you spilled water, so there won't be stickiness in there, but there's definitely still going to be some corrosion inside the computer. You could take it to the Apple Store, but they're going to want to charge you an ungodly amount of money to do anything to it, even if it does have Applecare, since they can tell when water has been spilled. Also, you may want to take out the battery to help it dry out. If you're really up for the job, you could open the computer up and take out the hard drive too.

Here's a topic on a Mac forum about a water spill as well:http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=306619&highlight=laptop+water+spill

Good luck :hug:
 
Most, if not all of the liquid spills I've worked on did not affect the hard drive. However, Macs are engineered in such a way that retrieving the hard drive puts us technicians into a psychotic rage, so you'll probably have to have someone at the Apple Store get it out for you. If the comp won't turn back on after air drying for a few days, it's likely the motherboard is shot. Your best bet is attaching the hard drive to another comp (you can buy adapters that let you plug in a laptop hard drive as a USB device), or buying a new comp and installing the old hard drive.
 
I spilled a bit of water on my Dell laptop

I immediately flipped if over and let it drain and dry for a couple of days.

I also blew some air from the bottom up (with it upside down)
to chase? as much water out of it as possible.

Well, it works fine still, I seem to have escaped any damage.


I know this does not help your situation.

I write this for future incidents.
 
Liesje said:
Most, if not all of the liquid spills I've worked on did not affect the hard drive. However, Macs are engineered in such a way that retrieving the hard drive puts us technicians into a psychotic rage, so you'll probably have to have someone at the Apple Store get it out for you. If the comp won't turn back on after air drying for a few days, it's likely the motherboard is shot. Your best bet is attaching the hard drive to another comp (you can buy adapters that let you plug in a laptop hard drive as a USB device), or buying a new comp and installing the old hard drive.

Very true, the older Macs and the Macbook Pro hard drives are not easy to get out.

Here's a video showing how to disassemble the Powerbook to get to the hard drive: http://eshop.macsales.com/tech_center/installation.cfm

Another suggestion would be to draw a diagram of where screws and everything go as you're taking it apart.

An alternative to the Apple Store technicians would be to take it to an Apple authorized technician. They would also be able to take the Powerbook apart without voiding a warranty or breaking things.
 
ntalwar said:
If it's still under warranty, just say it stopped working.

If the warranty does not cover a water spill, it won't work. It's relatively easy to tell when the damage has happened because of a spill.
 
thanks so much for your replies. :hug: it's still not working but i'm trying to get my mom to be patient...she wants to go out and buy a new computer like tomorrow (i think she wants a new one anyway, i think i've done her a favor). so hopefully a few days of drying will resolve things, i'll probably use those tutorials to try to get the hard drive out. to assuage my guilt. meh

thanks again! :)
 
Liesje said:

If the warranty does not cover a water spill, it won't work. It's relatively easy to tell when the damage has happened because of a spill.

It's worth a shot though. Just play dumb and hope they don't do a lot of forensics on it.
 
it's been over a week...i think the thing is just shot.
lies: this is a stupid question i'm sure, but if i got an adapter to plug the hard drive into another computer, that computer would have to be a mac wouldn't it?
:sigh:
 
VertigoGal said:

lies: this is a stupid question i'm sure, but if i got an adapter to plug the hard drive into another computer, that computer would have to be a mac wouldn't it?
:sigh:


If you're just needing to get her data off the drive, you could read the drive from a PC with a program like MacDrive. (There's a free trial that's fully functional.)

http://www.mediafour.com/support/trials_updates.asp
 
VertigoGal said:
it's been over a week...i think the thing is just shot.
lies: this is a stupid question i'm sure, but if i got an adapter to plug the hard drive into another computer, that computer would have to be a mac wouldn't it?
:sigh:

Nope. Well, I'm not all that familiar with Mac hard drives, but I'm assuming they are either a SATA or 2.5" ATA/IDE like PCs, just formatted differently. The adapter I have has components for either a SATA drive or a 2.5" ATA/IDE drive and then the other end is USB. I've connected PC hard drives to my PC and my Mac, and actually I've had better luck retrieving data simply by connecting it to my Mac, opening the mounted drive, and copying the stuff into a folder. But you can do it on a PC too. Just open My Computer, find the drive, and open it that way (like you would a flash drive). I've never connected a Mac drive to my adapter because....I've never successfully extracted a Mac drive without physically harming myself, lol. Those things are such a pain in the ass that even our Apple Certified Technicians take them to the Apple Store and make those guys do it.
 
For $20-25, you can get an external HDD enclosure - just choose the right one (e.g. 2.5" IDE) to USB. After you install it, it becomes a USB mass storage device (and can be read on a PC).
 
thanks for your suggestions, seriously. i wrote this shit down to talk to the apple "genius" today. :reject:

for those of you extremely invested in my fate by this point, it appears the repairs would be 1300+ bucks just for the parts. so it appears that we'll be buying a new macbook because they've got a 13" for like 1099 these days. how cheap. ah.

there is a $125 fee to have the guys at the apple store transfer the data to the new computer. i didn't exactly understand some of your posts, but are any of you saying there's something cheap i can buy/download to do that myself and transfer the data from the old hard drive to a new computer? or are we basically going to end up paying that as well? i'm sorry i'm pretty stupid when it comes to this. :reject:

thanks so much!
if i stop posting for a long stretch of time, you'll know why :uhoh:
although my brother told me she's secretly overjoyed because she wanted an excuse to buy a new one. :tryingtoeaseguilt:
 
Yes, you can buy an adapter that connects the current hard drive from the damaged computer to the new computer via USB (or maybe firewire). It's like using a flash drive or a card reader.
 
VertigoGal said:
thanks for your suggestions, seriously. i wrote this shit down to talk to the apple "genius" today. :reject:

for those of you extremely invested in my fate by this point, it appears the repairs would be 1300+ bucks just for the parts. so it appears that we'll be buying a new macbook because they've got a 13" for like 1099 these days. how cheap. ah.

there is a $125 fee to have the guys at the apple store transfer the data to the new computer. i didn't exactly understand some of your posts, but are any of you saying there's something cheap i can buy/download to do that myself and transfer the data from the old hard drive to a new computer? or are we basically going to end up paying that as well? i'm sorry i'm pretty stupid when it comes to this. :reject:

thanks so much!
if i stop posting for a long stretch of time, you'll know why :uhoh:
although my brother told me she's secretly overjoyed because she wanted an excuse to buy a new one. :tryingtoeaseguilt:

sorry to hear that it's going to cost that much. you probably fried the motherboard or logic board among other things.

you shouldn't have to pay the $125 if you grab one of these: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MOTGU2OB/
just pop the drive in there, then you'll have to get Macdrive that neutral talked about if you're going to hook it up to a PC, otherwise, just plug the drive into the new Mac and everything will transfer just fine. depending on how much data she had on the drive, it may take a loooong time to transfer.
 
martha said:


Crap. When we bought our new iMacs last summer, they transferred the data for free. I hate seeing Mac start on the gouging road. :tsk:


They probably charge b/c the system board is shorted form the spill and the drive has to come out for any sort of transfer. When you buy a new Mac, they can just connect the old one via crossover or FireWire without removing either of the drives. It's still not fair to pay $125 more just for the drive removal....but, on the other hand if you've ever tried to remove those drives, you'd probably charge $125!
 
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