Brian's Brain

Last night, after an extremely long and stressful day of travel and meetings, I sat down at the dining room table with my recently resurrected Dell Inspiron 700m laptop to catch up on emails and RSS feed content. To the left of me was a half-full glass of Merlot. And on the floor next to me was Charlene (she's the black-and-white cat).

Moo Shu (he's the dog) came up to Charlene. Charlene jumped up on the table. Can you guess what happened next? Sigh. After many years' worth of admittedly irresponsible computer operation in proximity to various liquids (both alcohol-inclusive and not) I guess probability finally caught up with me.

At first, I thought I'd dodged disaster; the system was seemingly still running fine. But when I grabbed it and tipped it on its side to pour wine out of the nearly new keyboard (yes, in retrospect, I realized I should have hit the power button or yanked the battery first), Windows started flashing 'unrecognized USB device' error messages. Then the touchpad began acting erratic (followed by complete failure), although the keyboard was still working. I was still able to remotely log into the system via RealVNC and control the cursor that way. But when I attempted to launch Windows Explorer in order to get my Outlook and other precious files off the system, the perpetual hourglass appeared.

Right now, the system boot-up is erratic, albeit never completely successful. Most times (but not always) it makes it through BIOS POST, but at some point during Windows launch it inevitably fails. Last night, I actually got all the way to a Windows login screen, but the built-in keyboard refused to cooperate and the system also ignored USB keyboard attachment attempts. Plus, Wi-Fi doesn't seem to be working, so I can't remotely log in, either.

Partial disassembly reveals a surprising lack of visible vino deposits. Since the keyboard is self-contained, complete with tray, only a few miniscule drops leaked from it to the metal surfaces below (I tried disconnecting the keyboard from the rest of the system, but to no avail). There's no red stain in the HDD, memory module and mini-PCI Wi-Fi adapter bays, either. But I suspect that the USB error messages are indicative of at least one Achilles' Heel. Both the USB ports and the air intake for the system fan are on the left side of the unit. And all areas exhibit a distinct aroma of sour Two Buck Chuck. All it takes is a drop to short out PCB traces, after all...

Admittedly, my reconnection with the Inspiron 700m was only intended to be temporary, and I'm pretty confident that the HDD's contents are still intact, so I can tether the drive to an adapter and retrieve precious files that way. But this is an unplanned distraction I really don't need right now; I've got a hands-on cover story for EDN's October 2 issue due in a bit over a week, and I'm traveling two consecutive weeks later this month (to the Intel Developer Forum and IEEE Hot Chips Conference, the latter in conjunction with a visit to NVISION if I can squeeze it in my schedule). And anyway, I was hoping to donate the Inspiron 700m to charity.

Suggestions are welcomed. And if any of you are in the Truckee, CA area this weekend and want to stop by to assist with disassembly, cleaning, reassembly and/or invocation tasks...

Worst case, I guess I know what my next Prying Eyes project will be about, eh?