Perils of spilling a drink and dead bugs

Q. I recently spilled my drink on my laptop and now the computer will not turn on or boot up at all. Is there anything I can do to save my system or, at the very least, my data?

A. Spilling liquid on your laptop is pretty much a death sentence for your device. The liquid conducts and routes electricity in ways that were never intended and basically fries the circuit board of the computer. Unless you have an accidental damage warranty covering the system, it’s likely down for the count.

However, there is a better than good chance that your data is still intact and available to be recovered. Many PC laptops have an easily accessible hard drive bay, which means you could remove the hard drive and connect it to a working computer and read it like an external hard drive.

If this is a Mac it’s a little more difficult to remove the drive, but it still can be done. If you’re not comfortable doing this on your own, most reasonably skilled PC techs should be able to do this for you for a fee.

Q. I have a 2018 iMac and there’s a literal bug inside the screen. I can see it just behind the glass. We tried compressed air in the vents at the bottom, but it won’t budge. Any ideas?

A. I did some searching and apparently this is not an uncommon problem. Bugs can and do crawl inside the monitor and if they die doing it, they just sit there.

In my search I found a YouTube video of someone who had this problem and used the vibrations of an electric toothbrush pressed against the screen to slowly move the dead bug out of view.