Hi,
my girlfriend spilled some water (~50ml) on her laptop Acer Aspire V3-331. We immediately switched it off, flipped it upside down, opened, took out the battery and let it dry for 2 weeks. However, the keyboard and the battery don’t work properly anymore. I would like to find out whether the battery and keyboard themselves are broken or whether the problem is the MB.
Symptoms:
95% of the keys on the keyboard don’t work at all, only 7 keys work normally, other 8 are coupled in pairs.
The battery worked fine for a day after putting the laptop back together, but the laptop suddenly switched off and ever since the battery is not charging and laptop only works connected to the power source. The orange LED battery indicator flashes constantly (~2s period), while the normal behavior would be continuous orange light for charging and green for fully charged. Windows 8 recognizes the battery only for about a minute (saying “Battery connected, not charging”) but as soon as I click on the icon, it changes into “No battery detected”.
What I’ve done:
I tried cleaning the contacts of the keyboard ribbon cable and the battery connector. I’ve measured the voltage across the mains of the battery, and it is very low (~2.5V). I couldn’t find a pinout, so I’m not sure, whether any of the other pins need to be connected to ground. The power adaptor gives 19.5V as it should, measured both directly and on the MB. I cannot check the BIOS battery status, as I can’t get into BIOS without the keyboard. For now, I disconnected the keyboard and battery and the computer works fine being constantly connected to power and with external BT keyboard.
I’m not sure whether I should buy a new keyboard+battery or a new MB or try to fix either of them.
Arguments for broken MB:
- both battery and keyboard seem physically fine, the battery’s not bulged
- the keyboard and the battery connector are sitting next to one another on the MB, which might not be a coincidence
- the battery is kind of recognized by the computer (the indicator is flashing)
- battery and keyboard cables are clean and not corroded
- it’s more probable that one thing broke than that two things broke simultaneously
Arguments against:
- no signs of corrosion or burns
- everything else beside battery and keyboard works fine
I also attach pictures of the whole insides of the laptop, the top and bottom of the MB, the battery and the keyboard with highlighted working and coupled keys (solid vs dashed line).
Unfortunately I don’t have any professional equipment. What kind of tests would you suggest for me to try to find out what the problem is? Thank you for any help!