Water damaged laptop

[ex_matelot]

I have a Toshiba Satelite p-30/133 pro, spilt water on it the other day...

Its buggered-bought it 14 months ago from pc world and didnt buy the extended warranty.Its registered with Toshiba but I dont know exactly what that entails??

Have had it checked out by a local repairman and he says the motherboard is wrecked,Toshiba quote £400 for a new one....

Anybody any ideas,it cost me £1400 only just over a year ago so im a little gutted.

:*

[airborne_artist]

Not sure that the extended warranty would have covered accidental damage anyway?

Your only option is to scour Ebay for the part and hope the laptop is not damaged elsewhere. I'm guessing that a motherboard would cost than £30-90 second hand. Fitting it should be fairly easy, and a local PC repair guy would do that for £40 or less.

There's about 20 listed on Ebay now, and you could set up a search that will alert you if your "model number AND motherboard" was listed.

[ex_matelot]

Cheers AA, looks like thats going to be my only option.

[zoink]

just a thought..

but you're house insurance may cover such a spill...

best of luck!!

[DBTL]

Not sure that the extended warranty would have I'm guessing that a motherboard would cost than £30-90 second hand. Fitting it should be fairly easy, and a local PC repair guy would do that for £40 or less.


Easy? Well, if you can call dismantling and putting together the whole of a laptop (save the screen) easy, then you're one dexterious person, esp. if it's the first of the kind for you.

I's strongly suggest you move your intact screen (?) to one that's been dropped with an broken screen. The hard drive you'll have as ready well, if that other laptop was on when it fell. Operating on the screen panel is ten times easier than on the system part.

[SyllogismCheck]

I wouldn't say there's anything to prevent a reasonably practically minded person taking a laptop down to its chassis and back up. It's just components, screwed, clipped, wired and slotted together afterall. No big deal.

I'd never so much as removed a single screw from a laptop when the systemboard in a Thinkpad I had died. Obtained the part, got the small screwdrivers out and away I went. About an hour later it was all back up and together and working perfectly. The only thing you can really put back in the wrong places are screws due to their varying lengths... and you wouldn't want to put a long screw in a short hole which may have something sensitive behind it.

In fact, I'd say that the one part of a laptop you are most likely to break when pulling it apart is the screen bezel. They're nearly always flimsy enough to break if you look at them too hard and never seem to want to unclip easily.

Go for it. Nothing ventured... and all that.

[boguing]

Replacing the motherboard is not a big deal if you can get one - contact Toshiba, you may find that it's astonishingly cheap for a recon unit (£25 when I last did it).

But - beware that there is a form of electronic cancer. When one component burns out, the next one in the chain gets it. This happened to me when a floppy drive controller died. Soon, other bits of the board died until it wouldn't boot any more.

First thing to do is isolate the hard drive and make sure your data is safe.

Last thing to do, if you've got Windows XP, when you reboot it will get upset. MicroSoft will give you a new code when you tell them what you've done.

pm if you want more help.

[DBTL]

Trust me, I've opened and fixed quite a few. It's not anything I'd recommend to a lay user. Especially on older ones everything plastic cracks if you're not extra careful. But if you did manage to put your parents' clock back together all right, well, yes, you can save a bundle. And the leftover screws'll come handy in your next project!


Hey and everybody: don't forget to put a drop of oil to the cover hinges once a year!

[ex_matelot]

Cheers for the advice everyone:ok:

Repair blokes bringing it back today and I'll discuss what he thinks is the way ahead.I have used this guy before and trust him to not give bull advice to rip me off.

I dont have a beard so operating on my laptop myself is way over my head!

I think E-bay is the best solution the way I see it.

[NZLeardriver]

I had the same problem with a Toshiba. They may be charging you for a new motherboard PLUS full data retrieval. I paid about 15% less for the same problem, at a Toshiba repair centre.