Water Damaged motherboard repair *Mostly*

[+Warwagon MVC]

Had a customer call me and tell me that they spilled water on their dell 2-1 and now it doesn't turn on and that they got a new computer. Then they proceed to tell me, they aren't broken up about it because they always disliked that dell laptop and they just need data transferred off the drive and that I could have the laptop for parts.

 

So the laptop would not turn on just an orange and white blinking light. Looking it up online they said that was a memory error. So I switched out the single stick of DDR4 for a different one and the laptop powered on.

 

There were still issues with the laptop, the external usb port functioned but 2 USB ports built onto the motherboard on the opposite side of the laptop were completely dead as well as the audio as there was no sound card showing up in the device manager, just intel audio.

 

So I removed the motherboard from the computer and looked under it. I was sure there was some troubled area on the motherboard were the water got to. When I flipped it over I saw this.

 

 

 

So I went to the store and got some isotropic alcohol, dumped it on the board and scrubbed the board with an old tooth brush. After scrubbing it, this is what the board looked like.

 

 

So I put everything back together again and low and behold the USB ports functioned again as well as HDMI and audio over HDMI. Sadly, the soundcard still does not show up in windows and so there is still no audio other than audio over HDMI.

 

I have tried disconnecting everything and holding the power button down as well as a bios update and reset. probably a short on the board from the water damage.

 

 

[Jim K Global Moderator]

Did you apply tons of liquid flux? Seems to work for Louis Rossmann.

[+Warwagon MVC]

7 minutes ago, Jim K said:

Did you apply tons of liquid flux? Seems to work for Louis Rossmann.

I looked at it under some magnification glasses and a flash light, and everything looks great. At the moment i'm apt to just leave well enough alone. Before I do something which kills this board competely.

[+Warwagon MVC]

The 2 in 1 is now my theater PC. Because the only audio that works on it is over HDMI, it's perfect! I can hook it up to my receiver which hooks up to my projector. Hooked it up and ran it through it's paces, including 7.1 surround sound test clips. Everything ran perfect!