Spilled tea, HD fried?

[emu88]

Hi. I had just got myself a cup of tea when my dog jumped up and threw it's contents over the keyboard of my HP laptop. What makes this worse is that it was at work and the laptop belongs to my boss.

I think there was a delay of max. 1 minute before I did anything. The computer shut itself off after a bit after which I immediately unplugged it, turned it upside down and blotted - upside down - the keyboard. It rebooted by itself when I was doing this but gave the error:

PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-061: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-M0F: Exiting Intel PXE ROM

Now I researched this and this is apparently due to the HD not being detected or bad BIOS setup and whatnot. I unscrewed the bottom panels and removed the RAM sticks, HD and unslotted the CPU. It was only in the HD compartment where there was some dampness in the form of a few condensation like drops on the metal outer casing. I promptly dabbed those up and with a paperclip pushed some kitchen towel into the pins of the HD and the slot it goes into. Immediately above the HD there's the expansion bay that holds the slide-in HP remote control, this was a bit damper. I removed that and shoved kitchen towel as far back as possible but it wasn't really wet at all. The tea went directly over the lower left area of the keyboard below which is the remote, then the HD.

I once dribbled on my desktops motherboard and thought I'd ruined it totally, but the next morning it worked like nothing ever happened.

So, is there a chance that the laptop too will work given a nights rest with the battery and HD removed?

PLEASE give me some expert run down of the likely outcomes, if there's a way to 'repair' a flooded HD or permanently dry it out. My boss is waiting for tomorrow...

 

[tlarkin]

Your machine can't find bootable material so it is trying to boot from the network. PXE (or called pixie booting) is when it tries to boot over the network.

I would check your BIOS and make sure it is set to boot off the HD before the NIC and verify that it even sees the HD in the BIOS in the first place.

 

[emu88]

Your machine can't find bootable material so it is trying to boot from the network. PXE (or called pixie booting) is when it tries to boot over the network.

I would check your BIOS and make sure it is set to boot off the HD before the NIC and verify that it even sees the HD in the BIOS in the first place.

I checked BIOS, no HD is detected even though it's set to be the 1st boot device, I reset BIOS to standard settings, rebooted, same issue.

 

[tlarkin]

make sure all connections are good, if the drive isn't recognized at all its bad, make sure you got power to it too.

 

[emu88]

make sure all connections are good, if the drive isn't recognized at all its bad, make sure you got power to it too.

I'm gonna try again, but all things are connected. Do you mean the adapter by power? If you mean to the HD directly then there's only the slots for the pins to go into which I presume is for both power and data..?

 

[tlarkin]

I'm gonna try again, but all things are connected. Do you mean the adapter by power? If you mean to the HD directly then there's only the slots for the pins to go into which I presume is for both power and data..?

some laptops run power and data through one connection, actually most do, some on rare occasion run separate.

 

[emu88]

some laptops run power and data through one connection, actually most do, some on rare occasion run separate.

Oh I see.
Tried again, nothing, same message. Maybe there's a chance it'll work tomorrow, seems to be a lot of sudden miracles concerning supposedly dead laptops that have had something spilled on them.

There's a test HD thing in BIOS, I ran it but it says no IDE drive detected.

I guess it's well and truly fried Really annoying, what is my boss gonna say.

 

[salman]

This isn't gonna help- but I'm cringing for you.

Yeah wait until tomorrow never know maybe the tea will dry out and it will work again.

 

[emu88]

This isn't gonna help- but I'm cringing for you.

Yeah wait until tomorrow never know maybe the tea will dry out and it will work again.

Thanks!

 

[316]

would it be possible just to buy a new hdd and OS load it and then try to make your boss not kill you???

 

[emu88]

would it be possible just to buy a new hdd and OS load it and then try to make your boss not kill you???

Well that's what I'm doing, looking online for replacements. DOnt look too expensive either. Trouble is I'm located in TUrkey, does anyone have a good site for spare parts that delivers Europe-Wide?