[SOLVED] So I opened up my laptop to clean it’s fan, but forgot to unplug the battery

[Badclinka2]

Context: a four year old acre aspire v3-574g, that had never been cleaned before

Pretty stupid of me, I know. For some reason I thought it wasn’t really necessary to unplug the main battery. I didn’t touch anything apart from the heat sink, fan and case. I tried to be careful, but I might have inadvertently touched a component or two near the fan. Once I put everything back together and tried booting up the laptop, it didn’t start. Nothing on the screen, and even the charging/power on LEDs were off. Can someone give me an appraisal of the damage I might have caused? Could I have blown the motherboard, is it something that can be fixed cheaply, or will I just have to get a new laptop? Will the data on my hard drive be affected?

Thanks,
G

(I’ve read up fairly on the issue of laptops not booting up after being cleaned internally. One of the screws in my case seems to have worn out it’s threading, so I can’t open the laptop again to check for loose connection or the like, until I fix that. I don’t have any electric tools so might need to get a mechanics help for that eventually.)

 

[hang-the-9]

There is no way to know what may have happened when you were working on it, we have as much to go on as you do, less even since you were there with it open in front of you.

Not likely that anything on the drive was affected, from the sound of it you don't have backups, so a good time to start doing that.

Need to have someone, or you, open the system and see what is going on, maybe something is unplugged, or you broke a component. Usually motherboard swaps come close to the price or a full working system. If you can't do the work yourself it may be better to just buy a working used laptop of the same model as yours and swap your drive into it.