Re: I 8200 + Water?

Hi!

My old but very useful Inspiron 8200 recently took a dive in about
2.5 feet of water when a pipe broke in my Son's basement.

Uh-oh.

Well, the first thing to do is to get all the power away from it. Take
out the power adapter, pull out the main battery, and if you can find
it, get the backup battery as well.

Open up the laptop as much as you can. Remove the expansion card
doors, expansion cards, RAM modules, whatever you feel comfortable
doing.

The computer has a fighting chance if you DON'T power it up before
letting it dry for a minimum of several days. I know you're curious--
everyone I've ever met who had this happen, including myself, has
been--but your curiosity will kill the cat.

I've had computers go through worse, although the hard drive and power
supply were toast. This was several days of sitting submerged in sewer
sludge.

Is there any hope if it dries out or is it and the data therein
toast?

For the computer itself, there is a good chance it will come out of
it. Integrated circuit parts are typically at least somewhat sealed.
Even an LCD should be fine if it gets a chance to dry out before you
power it.

But the hard drive is not sealed from the ingress of elements. Water
can get in there, and it will really foul things up. Give the drive a
chance to dry out, and then power it up. If by some chance it does
come online, have everything ready to transfer the data. You may not
have much time.

My Latitude D800 soaked up spilled water through the rug it was
sitting on. It only got a little, but that was enough as it dumped
into a STOP error very shortly afterwards. Two days of time in front
of a fan with all the power removed (including the backup battery) did
the trick. I put it in an air conditioned room and turned the A/C down
to the point where it would really dehumidify the room. You can get
the same result on the dashboard of your car (as long as you don't
live in a desert or park in direct sunlight) or near a sunny window in
your house (if you're afraid someone might steal your laptop's remains
out of the car).

William (...and that's to say nothing of the 30 plus computer mice
that went throug the dishwasher and rode around on the dashboard of my
truck for a few days to dry out...)
.

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