Laptop puked on, haha.

[raiden_nrl]

A friend of mine told me someone was partying a bit hard and puked all over her laptop. I got her to drop it off so I could attempt to fix the thing as it has no warranty.
Unfortunately they attempted to turn it on a couple times, and the computer would not read the keyboard anymore. Obviously it was expected as the keyboard was filled with the sick.
I cleaned up the laptop, it will post (diagnostic checks fine) but will get stuck at the Vista loading screen. Used the vista disk to try and repair any corrupt files but still will get stuck at the load screen, as well as safeboot. Tried without each piece of RAM and accessory cards.
So I am led to believe that the hard drive is the culprit in this boot issue?

 

[Lexluethar]

Hard drive, see if a clean installation will fix the issue.

If you allow the laptop to dry without turning it on or having power go to it, the liquid won't damage it. Monday night i spilled an enitre glass of chocolate milk on my laptop. Enough where it was spilled on the top and leaking through the fans on the bottom.

Pulled battery right away, unplugged it and let it dry (took it apart and cleaned parts on the MB with a damp clothe).

 

[raiden_nrl]

Yeah, that's one of the issues though. It looks as if someone else tried to pull the hard drive and stripped the screws completely. It's one of the only hardware parts I can't get to right now.
The computer wont boot from a vista disk, it also gets stuck in a boot loop. So I can't get into the hard drive from the disk to format it. I was going to try and pull some files off of it that she wanted using another computer and slaving it, but I can't get at the ****** thing.
There is the sick all over the vent where it is located so i'm assuming it got quite a lot.

 

[Lexluethar]

Ya, i mean if it won't boot into safemode there isn't a whole lot you can do. Run diagnositcs on the hard drive to ensure it is actually physically okay. Assuming it passes the diag test then the files were probably damaged during the process of trying to turn the PC back on.

Load a linux live CD to see if you can access the drive and files that way.

 

[MindoverMaster]

That is the funniest thing I heard since I killed my Pentium 2 laptop with Pepsi....

That was an old laptop i picked out of the trash, and it actually worked.

But, yeah, Lex has it right.

 

[raiden_nrl]

Alright, do you guys know any free bootable diagnostic tools for the hardrive?
Yea when I opened it up it wasn't the most pleasant thing, the keyboard is pooched though, I cleaned it in distilled water, is completely clean and still doesn't read it.

 

[-RockMan-]

You need to replace that keyboard on the laptop.
Shouldn't be hard for you to do, just go to ebay.com and search for:
Example: toshiba satellite S214 keyboard, and it should be able to find it for you and then you can spend the next 2 hours looking a for decent price and waiting for the seller to repsond to your email.

 

[raiden_nrl]

Alright guys, a little update. I managed to (carefully) drill the screws and get the hard drive out. I already have another keyboard on it's way.
I connected the hard drive to my desktop, it cought and fixed some corrupted damage and booted to windows log in.
So it is not the hard drive that is the problem, any other ideas?