http://www.ehow.com/guide_5-http://www.ehow.com/guide_5-computers.html.htmlwww.ehow.comhttp://www.ehow.com/how_113626_clean-laptop-spills.htmlSpilling coffee on your laptop will not only ruin your morning, it can ruin your computer. Act quickly if this happens, because it only takes seconds for liquids to destroy the hard drive of a laptop computer. Here are a few steps to save your laptop computer after a spill. Published on 1/1/2005http://www.ehow.com/tips_113626.htmlYou should also let your board completely dry before you plug it in or power it up. You also should leave your battery out so that there isn't any power in the board. If you don't remove the battery or power adapter, you risk in frying your board even more. I always remove the logic board (motherboard) and give it a shower with denatured alcohol and also brush it with a tooth brush, then let it dry or dry it with a compressed air duster can that you use to blow dust out of a computer. The thing people don't quite understand or know that they should do after a spill is that if you spill liquid on a device, you should disconnect the power and remove the battery, then take the laptop completely apart and clean the motherboard with denatured alcohol.. Corrosion is our worst nightmare because it eats away components and makes the solder on each component disappear and then it looses conta...http://www.ehow.com/tips_113626.htmlThe best solution is to use denatured alcohol (not rubbing alcohol, Denatured alcohol.) If you have any signs of corrosion then you should wet your board with the denatured alcohol then use a tooth brush to clean it. Thats what I do and most of the time it fixes it... I work on macs laptops and I see water spills a lot so that's my recommendation!. http://www.ehow.com/tips_113626.htmlA couple days ago I spilt a little tea on my laptop keyboard. I was quick to immediately turn it over, perform a cold shut down (pressed power key until it turned off), and dry off the keyboard with paper towels. I kept it upside down for around 6 hours before powering it on to see if it works. No problem, everything is fine (whew!). However, now I wonder if some of the tea may be on the boards that could cause them to erode with time. My warranty does not cover water damage. Should I take it apart and clean the board and immediated areas under the keyboard with q-tips and distilled water or just hope that nothing was affected? That is, how much more damage could I do to it by trying to clean it? I am a computer science major who is familiar with electronics, but not an expert in the area.http://www.ehow.com/tips_113626.htmlUnfortunately, I didn't read this site until after. I kept it on and it was charging. I only attempted to do these items about one hour later. I am drying it now. Is it too late for my computer?http://www.ehow.com/tips_113626.htmlLast night my dog knocked the table and some water spilled onto my laptop I didn't know about this site. The first thing I did was unplug it and shut it down then got off as much of the water as I could I let it sit overnight to dry ( did not invert it or remove the battery) thought I dried everything out ok This morning I plugged it in and turned it on hoping it was OK it is coming up as hardware malfunction <br/>So is this a total loss? any ideas on what I do now?? <br/>Help! <br/>Thank youhttp://www.ehow.com/tips_113626.htmlI am the world wide expert on repairing very expensive equipment which often gets wet. I started with $10-20,000 medical equipment but after perfecting my methods, now we do all laptops ipods and phones. If anyone needs this repair, see my website www.macadamia.ushttp://www.ehow.com/tips_113626.htmlHi...thanks for sharing such a useful information,it really helped me as it happened with me 2 days back with my new laptop that I got from http://www.checkcost.co.uk/laptops/c/4220/. I followed the above instructions and it really saved my laptop. Thanks once again for a given article, keep posting.http://www.ehow.com/tips_113626.htmlwhat about something that has dried under a key so that that key no longer works?http://www.ehow.com/tips_113626.htmlwhen I worked at IBM laptop systems before sold to Lenovo. There are a few myths posted here in the comments and the original article is also wrong. Hard drives on laptops are self-contained and SEALED. You CAN short the pins across the power leads. You CAN NOT get liquid into the physical disk, or the controller board. To the person who mentioned not using Saline, your half right, Saline would seperate the lamination from the boards and other components. Most importantly, system critical paths are Gold, Saline should never be used anyway. To the person who stated using Distilled water you are 100 % correct! That would be the ONLY solution to use when cleaning a board preferably de-ionized which distilled water. For all users reading this strongly encourage you to not do any of this yourself thats why you have a warranty. If you must I would also recommend using a Q-tip between keys.http://www.ehow.com/tips_113626.htmlIs it possible to experience damage down the line if water is spilled on the laptop? The keys weren't working properly, but the next day everything seemed to be working fine. I'm worried there may be some latent damage that could ruin the computer in the future.