Spilled vinegar on laptop, what to do?

We accidentally spilt vinegar on netbook (EeePC). What should we do about it? Should we try to wash vinegar out or just let it dry?

I spilled lemonade on mine a week or 2 ago. It was a lot. My laptop immediately shut off (without being told). I immediately removed the battery and power cable (minimizing damage) and set about removing all the moisture. I have some experience taking laptops apart, but not a whole lot. I removed the keyboard and enough covers to access just about all the internal components. The keyboard was had most of the moisture and I found some drops on the pcb under the memory and various drops elsewhere on the pcb.

After soaking up as much as I could by spot blotting with a towel (don't just throw your towel on and mash away--only blot where you see drops) and letting it air dry for about a half hour, I reassembled and tried firing it up. It didn't work. It was as if the power button was inop. The power light did come on with the cable plugged in though.

The final step in solving this was spraying a lot of contact cleaner in the keyboard (had to remove the keyboard to do this) letting it soak a bit and then spraying copious ammounts of compressed air in/on it to dry it completely. After that, it's worked like a champ. If you got a lot of moisture on the pcb under the keyboard, it is probably more dangerous but still worth trying the contact cleaner & air dry method I used on the keyboard.

Here's a video to use as sort of a guide on disassembly http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0Jlq_mbqkI

Here's the contact cleaner I used for the keyboard: http://www.amazon.com/CRC-Electrical-Contact-Cleaner-Aerosol/dp/B003NTQCA2

I think adding more liquid is not the way to go.

See here for some good tips.

1. Turn it off. If need be, do a hard shutdown.
2. Blot up excess liquid with a soft cloth. Don't use a wiping motion, that just pushes the liquid around.
3. Remove any cables, external drives, removable bays and external Network Cards.
4. Blot up the liquid that may have gotten on the removable media.

See the link for more.

Vinegar (acetic acid) is conductive, but has a very low conductivity rate. That said, it can still do damage as circuitry in a computer is fairly sensitive. Washing it out would be a bad idea, as the water that comes out of your tap would be far more conductive and far more damaging than the acid. The first step is always powering down and removing the battery as quickly as possible. If you flooded the device, it would be best to take as much apart as you can and remove the liquid carefully with a sterile cloth by blotting and not wiping. If there isn't much, simply blot lightly with a cloth, but don't pour it out, as it could flow over something that you would rather it didn't. You can use a light amount of penetrating fluid (such as wd-40) to get into harder to reach spots or remove moisture that the cloth is not removing. Leave the device in pieces for a while so that it dries out completely before attempting to power on again. You should also do a visual inspection to ensure that there are no blown or distended capacitors on the board.

This is just a guess, but I would:

1. Turn it off

2. Take out the battery and anything else that's removable

3. Let it dry, and dry anything possible with a cloth or something