Coffee spill on Laptop

[Daymin]

Hello, 

Long story short: my girlfriend spilled a lot of coffee all over her laptop (Asus F540L) and now we try to fix it.

 

The laptop turned itself off in seconds, immediately tried to boot automatically but turned itself off again even before windows was loaded.

After most of the Liquid was drained the laptop spun up for a few minutes but the screen stayed black and you couldn't force a shutdown 
I already disassembled the laptop removed the  front-cover with keyboard, battery, HDD and optical drive because Asus customer support declared that the warranty isn't voided by opening up the computer.

We removed the all coffee stains with distilled water and Q-Tips and are now planning to go to the next pharmacy to get rubbing alcohol for proper cleaning.

 

I now want to ask if there are any other recommendations to assure the best possibility for the computer to be still working after proper cleaning and drying.

 

Thank you in advance!

 

Greetings, Markus. 
 

[Tedster]

My first observation is it's a real shame that you weren't able to remove the battery within the first ten or so seconds of coffee being there.

 

If it's completely dried out and it boots up and all is well, then all is probably well. However, I would suggest you at the very least pay careful attention to the HDD.

[Daymin]

9 minutes ago, Tedster said:

My first observation is it's a real shame that you weren't able to remove the battery within the first ten or so seconds of coffee being there.

 

If it's completely dried out and it boots up and all is well, then all is probably well. However, I would suggest you at the very least pay careful attention to the HDD.

out of instinct I pulled out all cables as soon as I was at my girlfriends desk, but the battery isn't removalbe from the outside and I took it's time to remove all ten screws and pry open the laptop.
Additionally the battery was held in place with double sided tape so that was a bitch itself.

The HDD looks completely dry and I will try to copy all important files by connecting it to my pc.

[Tedster]

Just now, Daymin said:

out of instinct I pulled out all cables as soon as I was at my girlfriends desk, but the battery isn't removalbe from the outside and I took it's time to remove all ten screws and pry open the laptop.
Additionally the battery was held in place with double sided tape so that was a bitch itself.

The HDD looks completely dry and I will try to copy all important files by connecting it to my pc.

Yes, absolutely ridiculous design (:

Either make it spillproof or make it so that you can remove the battery immediately in the case of spills...

 

It may *look* completely dry, but it may not be completely dry inside - I think it's unlikely that it's perfectly sealed as drives have tiny holes in the casings to do something something air pressure I believe. Err on the side of caution (:

[Daymin]

54 minutes ago, Tedster said:

Yes, absolutely ridiculous design (:

Either make it spillproof or make it so that you can remove the battery immediately in the case of spills...

 

It may *look* completely dry, but it may not be completely dry inside - I think it's unlikely that it's perfectly sealed as drives have tiny holes in the casings to do something something air pressure I believe. Err on the side of caution (:

the "good" thing about coffee is that you're able to see where it went because of the stains and there was only a small droplet on top of the HDD nowhere near any electronics or the holes.

[Tedster]

1 minute ago, Daymin said:

the "good" thing about coffee is that you're able to see where it went because of the stains and there was only a small droplet on top of the HDD nowhere near any electronics or the holes.

If you're absolutely sure there's no chance that the coffee was hot enough to have evaporated and then condensed inside the drive perhaps (in the very unlikely event though)...