Miraculous Recovery! - A story of loss, frustration, hope and survival.

[ti_marner]

Thought I'd post this here for perpetuity's sake and you guys might find it entertaining - it seems the Zen Vision:M is tougher than you might think!

This is a much longer post than I anticipated, but stick with it - hopefully you'll find it reassuring, and maybe a little entertaining.
<hr>Two days ago I dropped my ZVM. Yes I admit it, I dropped my precious. The thing is, I was in the bathroom, in front of a sink full of water, and it went in.. Thus started my saga.

The moment my ZVM hit the water I was scooping it out, however the damage was already done, droplets of water were falling from the casing and the screen was doing that funny thing that LCD's do when they don't like the world any more - green and black vertical lines appeared all over my background wallpaper and everything went black. At this point my heart sank, so I did what any sensible, technology respecting UK citizen would do to sensitive electronics that have just had a dunk, I shook it. Hard.

I think I should mention at this point, that I think my saving grace was the invisi-shield I had purchased when my ZVM was new. It had covered most of the seams and stopped a lot of water ingress. However my bathroom walls still bear testament to the quantity of water that did get in!

Then my ZVM wouldn't turn off. Nuts. At this point I pretty much thought I was screwed, £200 out of pocket, bye bye nice spa visit for the missus (there's no way I'm going without my music!), so I decided to leave it for the night and hit the hay. With it's little HDD spinning and power light on, I put my baby to bed in it's specially purchased Lowepro case, chucked in as many bags of silica gel I could lay my hands on and tried to forget everything until the morning.

Luckily, it was a very sunny day the next day, and my ZVM seemed to have decided overnight that it was better with it's power off. So I left it in the window in full sunlight while I went to work. Never fear though! - it was still in it's case with even more silica gel, but I thought I'd let it gently bake for a couple of days. A thorough search of the anythingbutipod forums over the next two days to see if anyone else had befallen the same trauma brought up only one solitary post, this ended up with the guy trying a warranty return with Creative and the water-damaged ZVM, although there was nothing to say whether he'd succeeded or not. In any case, it was literally only just days out of it's warrantly period, typical eh?

In any case, my luck didn't seem to be in. After ~48hrs of strong but gentle drying, there was no response. I was loath to disassemble my ZVM, but what else was there now except for the pure pleasure of exposing it's guts to the world, it was out of warranty right?

So I followed the how to on this site diligently, and stoped at removing the mainboard only to peak my curiosity at what it would do when plugged in without a battery. Maybe I could get a response with a good whack of pure juice and nothing else in the way? It was worth a shot.

Ah! The power light started flashing, once a second. On, off, on, off. My heart leaped into my throat, I didn't want to give myself false hope, but surely this was a sign? I removed power and plugged the HDD back in.. flash, flash. I removed power again and plugged the battery in.. Rebuilding? Woohoo!!
<hr>So there you have it folks, I guess the moral of story is that you should never give up hope, and always take it step by step. I have no idea how my ZVM suddenly started working again, but it did. Maybe the Li-Ion battery has a cut-out circuit built in, maybe I re-tightened something, or maybe it just needed a little TLC? But any way you cut it, my life is now complete again.

[CrowdAds]

[skippyg]

heh as long as the water wasnt dirty, it shouldnt of totally killed it, was it on at the time of the drop? it would of probably fried it. BUT! sounds good!

[ti_marner]

Not until it hit the water! Then it decided to turn on, have a spaz attack and do the black screen thing. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed.

[RCM]

This is gotta be one of the best water damage stories my sisters M240 got wet and I let it dry for a couple of days and it worked PERFECTLY again

[ZenChick]

Nice story! I always love happy endings!

The reason your player didn't want to power back on was probably because, when you had to leave the player running, it faithfully did so until the battery ran out.

I am so glad everything worked out for you!

[EricRN]

Woo Hoo! Glad to hear it man!

[scullyinfurs]

I bet the little bugger really benefited from the sunlight, though - I'm sure it helped dry out the water faster than if you'd just let it sit on a table somewhere. The silica packs, too - good idea. I would set a fan on mine if that happened.

I think the player can survive a dunk in the water - but not more than a second - and it just needs time to dry out and pull itself together. But now that you've opened it up, you could see where all the water could get in and what all could be immediately affected. To me it looked like the worst places for water to get in were the switch, the dongle plug, and the space where the two face panels meet. Wonder how to protect those spots? I guess you could carry the player around all day in a ziplock baggie.

[teh pwnz0r]

That was deep.

[BnjS]

you're a hero, you saved . . . the spa visit!

[Guatiao]

I almost cried out of joy... but decided not to, in case your ZVM was near... don't want to get it wet again... LOL!