Andy

Careful with step #5! Open sun exposure can damage your components as much as the water. Since the computer was turned on before the water, and off after the water I'd say the odds of a short are high. Typically if water spills on a computer and the computer is off, it can be dried in one of iFixIt's drying bags, or a bag of rice. This works because the computer isn't conducting (much) electricity when off, there is still a tiny bit there though so it isn't a guarantee that you can recover it even if the computer is off at the time of the spill. Any number of your components may be fried, the first I would wager would be the motherboard. Usually the mobo will absorb the short and just replacing that is enough, however any (and all) of your components could be fried! Start by looking for any signs of defect, small burns or swollen capacitors (there may not be any since a short happens pretty quickly). After you replce the mobo, pay attention to any sequences of lights or beeps you get to continue diagnosing...

Hello, You will likely want to place your hard drive into compatibility mode and manually partition the hard drive, deleting all the available partitions and installing onto the blank space. This will, of course, delete all your data! If that doesn't work for you, or you need functionality from the SATA controller not available in compatibility mode, you can search for the "F6 (or floppy drive) Sata (sometimes Raid) Drivers" for your brand of motherboard. These can be installed during installed during the Windows installation by placing them onto a USB drive, and pressing F6 when the installer prompts you to in order to install third-party drivers. I don't believe pulling the CMOS will do much to help you in this case.

Hello Fred, A few things could be going on here, first a few questions: (1) Does the hard drive "spin up"? (2) Does the computer make any noises or have any balloons popping up in the bottom right corner? (3) Have you tried another USB port (silly question, but great for Googlers!)? If you get either of the first two, you will want to try right clicking on "My Computer" and selecting "manage". From there, you can select "Disk Management" from the left hand side and see if your disk is listed among those available in the lower-pane. If it is there, right click it and select "Assign Drive Letter and Path" and give it a drive letter. If you don't get a "spin up", then the drive is most likely not receiving enough power from the computer. If this is a desktop, make sure you are using some USB ports on the back connected to the motherboard itself and not those infront of the computer where less power can be drawn. If this is a laptop, try other ports and specifically look for an eSata port (doesn't look like a...

Try adding some sugru to customize it to your needs!