Notebook Help

[Philip Ayres]

During Christmas day we had an upended cup of tea incident which ruined several of Liz's Christmas presents and got into her netbook.

The Netbook booted OK afterwards yesterday

Today it won't. Lights come on when you boot it then there's a sequence of beeps 3 followed by 4 then 3 again as the HDD light goes out.

F2 won't bring up the setup screens

The netbook is a Samsung N-130. Way out of warrenty and, crucially, she's failed to back her data up including all her work for her PGCE and her lesson planning.

So....

Any ideas how to get it going again?

[Andy Turnbull]

I'd recommend of possible taking if there has been any tea damage, switching it on with liquid still inside it may have knackered it. If that is the case, I'd remove the harddrive and try and stick it in a pc to use as a secondary drive and pull any data off it. Failing that an external USB caddy would be a winner, bung the HD in that and hook it up to pc and pull the data off.

Andy

[Philip Ayres]

It's off to the local PC repair place today. I don't want to risk further wrath of Liz by loosing her data.

[Philip Ayres]

Data recovered. Notebook dismantled, cleaned, rebuilt and is now working.

Liz £80 poorer and hopefully now realising the importance of regular backup and not leaving cups of tea in silly places.

But I doubt it somehow

[Stomski]

Yah, Turnbull points out something important here - It was probably the turning it on whilst there was the possibility of water creating shorts that caused the damage.

If you ever get electronics wet, try to dry it out first before risking turning it on.

One safe way is to pack it in silica gel.

I think the Gadget show once did a test where they even put a mobile phone in the freezer...?