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Hi all. I'm having a few problems with the lappy...

Last night I dropped coke all over my bed and although the keyboard/monitor was spared, the bottom/base of my laptop was soaked with coke. I didn't turn it off afterwards (instead I just wiped it off with a cloth) and it was working normally for the next 6 or so hours I had left it open. Then I turned it off for ~9 hours and when I tried turning it back on, it wasn't booting...

First I get this black loading screen saying "Latitude C610" and "BIOS Revision A16", also has the "F2: Setup; F12: Boot menu" options in the top right corner. When I press either, it doesn't respond and I can't seem to access either menus. Instead, it goes to a white screen with a message saying
"The device in the system module bay cannot be identified. It may not be completely inserted or may have some other problem. Please read and complete the following steps in order:
1) Press the device completely and firmly into the bay.
2) Press the ESC key--wait for the system to power down.
3) Press the power button to retry detecting the device."

I followed these steps, tried changing devices and not putting in a device at all, but it's still happening. If I leave it on the white screen with the message above long enough it just turns off by itself...

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advanced.

Welcome to PC Help Forum

Sounds like some of that sticky liquid has made its way into somewhere it shouldn't have...probably the motherboard. If it were me, I would take the whole thing apart and see if there was any way to clean it all. If you can't do that then I'm sure you can find someone locally to do it. As you didn't have that error prior to the coke disaster and now you have the error, unless anything else happened to the lappy in the meantime, I think it's safe to say that the coke is the culprit.

Thanks for the reply.

Yeah I guess it must be the coke. A friend of mine reckons it's probably gotten to the hard drive, he says the motherboard is most likely fine as long as the PC actually turns on. He also said that it might cost ~$120 to get it repaired at a technician. Alternatively, like you suggested, I could try and get in there myself. I've got no tools or cleansors whatsoever but I guess I could get some and give it a shot if it'll end up saving me $100 or so, given that it's relatively safe and not very complicated. Do you think a rookie like myself is up to such a task? I'm alright with following orders

Do you have household insurance and accidental cover?