Why is it difficult to repair a flooded laptop. Is it worth it?

What's the problem anyway?

The fact is that even a small flooded area can lead to huge problems. A short circuit of the 19V line with the appearance of a conductor leading to other lines. And 19V and several amperes will go for a walk along, for example, the processor power line.

In addition, most modern laptops, as a rule, have built-in batteries. And all the time, while the water splashes in the depths of the device, the battery will power this whole swamp. Even if there is no “breakdown” on other lines, then with the participation of electricity, corrosion accelerates many times. And the longer the battery is inside, the less chances there are to save the laptop.

Sea water is the worst – but it's not laptops that suffer (after all, hardly anyone takes such a device into the sea), but phones. In this case, there is no chance at all if at least something gets inside. Here is an old video of an iPhone that fell into the sea and was immediately pulled out.

Cola is another enemy of any electronic device. Not only does it cause active corrosion of any metal components, but when it dries, it leaves something like drops of thick syrup. You can't clean it with alcohol – you can only use water (not necessarily distilled, then dry it with alcohol).

Beer is also not a particularly pleasant liquid – it also dries, leaving unpleasant smelling traces. And it is also difficult to wipe off beer with alcohol.

Coffee, usually with sugar, is also bad. Actually, who am I kidding – any conductive liquid (meaning that it has dissolved salts) is a huge problem for the device. It doesn't matter if it's a phone or a laptop. On the one hand, it's easier with laptops, on the other – more difficult. It's easier because they're just bigger, and a small amount of liquid isn't always a death sentence. It's bad – because they're big, and the liquid can spread in the most unpredictable directions. And it takes longer to clean them, plus not every technician has an ultrasonic bath for the final cleaning of the laptop's board.

And I will emphasize again – the longer the “flood” stands without repair, the lower the probability of its successful repair in the future.

What can be done and in what cases is the game worth the candle

Here everything depends on how long the laptop has been idle and what exactly is spilled on it. In my practice, there were several interesting cases:

A drop of liquid leaked onto the unit responsible for the image on the screen. Moreover, this unit was hidden behind a small sticker, which I did not pay attention to. In order to fix it all, I simply threw a wire from the starting point to the monitor, and it worked (I do not remember the details). After a while, this “crutch” also failed, I unscrewed the laptop again and only then saw an extremely small oxidized area that affected two legs of the component responsible for the image signal. At the same time, the first time I was very attentive – but, apparently, not completely.

A drop of liquid fell on two legs of the multicontroller, and the oxide film was so small in area that I saw it only after half an hour of studying the board under a microscope. It was really surprising – when such a small area can lead to the laptop not turning on. Fortunately, after removing the oxide, the laptop started working.

A drop of liquid in a gaming laptop caused a burnout in the board. The damage was not very large, I replaced all the damaged components, restored the power lines. Everything worked, except for the power button on the keyboard – this was an unrelated problem. I ordered a keyboard on AliExpress, but by the time it arrived, the laptop refused to turn on. I looked through all the components again, replaced another part, looked at this burnout – everything is ok. You press the power button – the keyboard lights up for a second, the cooler twitches and everything goes out. After two days of suffering with this device, I just gave up. I don’t understand the reason.

Here I want to emphasize that even if you have removed the traces of flooding, it can always happen that something in one of the underlying layers of the board has already oxidized – and it is impossible to see it, and measurements will show that everything is ok. Of course, I do not mean a short circuit – then it is still possible to localize the problem.

There were a few more cases when I simply wiped off the spill traces and the dead laptop started working. Of course, I checked to make sure there were no damaged components, soldered the problematic contacts, etc. if necessary. But there were such cases too.

^{There is often no point in fixing something like this if the laptop is a budget one.}

But it still happens more often that it is easier to buy a new laptop, especially if it is an inexpensive model. If the device is not cheap, then you can try to repair it, if it is something budget, then it is worth trying to practice, but there is no commercial sense in this. Even if you manage to fix it, the repair, if the flooding is large-scale, will take a lot of time.

A flood is like a time bomb with two or three additional trigger circuits. You turn off one – there are still several left (I saw this in spy movies). You can clean the flood, everything will be fine, but in a week or a month, corrosion will lead to the sound turning off, or the image will glitch, or the laptop will stop turning on. This is the main problem with flooded devices – and services are very reluctant to take them.

Repairing it yourself is possible, and it's interesting. But sometimes the list of parts to replace is so long that the budget for this matter exceeds the cost of the device itself (after all, it's used).

Tell us about what you do with flooded laptops, especially about interesting cases from your practice.