Help needed urgently - no laptop screen

tubbee2

My son has spilt a drink over his laptop keyboard resulting in blacking out of the entire screen. (He's nearly 19 and I really thought he would know better but there you go) Problem being his end of term work is on the laptop and he needs to access it to transfer it to another computer to continue working on it but he can't see the screen to see what he is doing! He had saved it prior to the spillage but hadn't backed up to an external source - something to be said for the days of the floppy.......?

I'm at work and he's at home in an increasing panic so if anyone can offer any advice I would really appreciate it.

Thanks

Knarf44

The drink has possibly fried the motherboard in which case the laptop will be a write-off. I would suggest taking the hard drive out and putting it into a USB caddy http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Storage/Drive+Enclosures/External+%28For+SATA+Drive%29/ARIANET+U25BS+2.5%22+SATA+USB+2.0+Hard+Drive+HDD+Enclosure+%2F+Black+?productId=39520

then he can plug it into any Windows PC/laptop to recover his files.

i should have added that the laptop can then be taken to a repair centre to get a professional opinion on whether it is worth trying to fix - a new motherboard fitted can be almost as much as a new budget laptop ie £250-£400 depending on make/model.

Inner_Zone

Just in case the MB is not totally fried try plugging an external monitor in. If it works he maybe able see to transfer the data to a USB stick or similar.

S0litaire

Agree with Innerzone.

If he can plug in another screen he should be able to use that to get access to his data.

or if it's totally dead...

Tell him to run out and buy a USB caddy (£5-£10 from any local PC shop) then let him figure out how to remove the hard drive from the laptop and put it into the caddy.
he then just needs to plug it into another PC as an external drive and he can browse to find his files.

tubbee2

thanks everyone - i will try plugging into another screen and then the usb caddy - much appreciated.

tb

S0litaire

With the number of students having "accidents" with the End of Term assignments...

The schools should have a small Friday assembly about how to BACKUP your school files for safety... ^_^ lol

Hope he gets his files...