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What happens if you spill anything on your computer? What can you do?

Spilling something on you desktop computer keyboard or even worse over your laptop might seem bad, but knowing what to do as soon as this happens might be able to save you a costly repair.

Depending on what’s been spilt and the quantity, this has a big factor on the damage. Usually it’s either water, coffee or a soft drink.



Whatever gets spilt the first thing to do it shut down your computer as fast as possible. Usually the quickest way is to just hold the power button if it’s a laptop, after a few seconds it will shut off completely,  or just removing power if it’s a desktop.

If you’ve just spilt water although conductive is probably the least harmful to your computer.

Once powered off “ if it’s a laptop, remove the battery, then use tissue to soak up any water you can find then you just need to leave it somewhere warm, not too hot though, so it can dry our properly, once your sure it’s dried out try to power on to test it.

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If you spill coffee or a soft drink, this is probably one of the worst things, especially if it has sugar in it, you’ll need to remove whatever you’ve spilt, the only way to do this is to open the case, this may be a job for you local techie or computer shop, now you need to remove any of the spilt substance you can see, kitchen towel is good for this, not normal tissue though, as it’s too fragile.

As soon as you spill something like this , you really need to try and remove it before it dries, otherwise it’s worse to remove, once something with sugar in it dries , you’ll have to use a wet cloth to re-wet the substance, so it can be removed.

Once you have managed to wipe up the substance completely make sure that you have removed all traces of it, a just damp cloth can be used for this.

Now place it somewhere warm so it can dry out properly. Once you are happy it’s dry, put it back together and test properly.

If you find the computer does not work after this, depending where the liquid has been spilt will usually determine what has been damaged.

On laptop computers, it's generally spilt on the keyboard, but underneath the keyboard will be one the motherboard.

When it comes to Laptops the most expensive parts are the screen and the motherboard. You might be able to pick up a bargain on sites such as e-bay, but purchasing screens or motherboards from manufacturers is usually not far off the price of a new laptop.

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