What to Do with a Water Damaged Barnes and Noble Nook

Accidents happen, and sometimes those accidents result in a water damaged Barnes and Noble Nook. The popular ebook reader is small and slick, so it's easy to drop it into a pool, a bathtub, or, er, the toilet.

When you've submerged your Barnes and Noble Nook in water, here are a few tips to help you get it up and running right away--or to help you find a replacement without divulging your personal information.

Try to dry the Nook off and fix it. If the Nook is off, don't turn it on. If it's on, don't turn it off. Dry off any water with a clean towel as quickly as you can. Immediately take off the back cover. There's a small indentation near the bottom miniUSB port that you can use to begin prying off the back cover, which should come off rather easily.

After the cover's off, immediately get the water damaged Nook into some rice. As with a cell phone, rice will pull out the moisture--so the theory goes. Plain white rice is fine, and no, you don't have to cook it. Please don't cook it.

You should leave the water damaged Nook in the rice for a day or two. Just leave it in there. Don't try to plug it in or run electricity through it in any way or you'll do more damage than good. If you're lucky, after a day or two of the rice treatment, you'll be able to turn on the Nook and use it normally again.

Contact Barnes and Noble. If the rice treatment didn't work, you'll have to contact Barnes and Noble.
Dropping a Nook into water will pretty much void your warranty, so you're out of luck there, but you don't want to sell a broken Nook online and buy a new one, because your old one could suddenly start working again--and chances are, it's linked up to your Barnes and Noble account along with your credit card. Ask Barnes and Noble to deauthorize the Nook and see whether you can pay for a replacement.

If you send your Nook in for a replacement, make sure to remove any miniSD card that you installed in the Nook to expand its memory. There's a good chance that a water damaged miniSD card will still work just fine, so it's worth a shot when you get the new one in.

Have any tips for dealing with a water damaged Barnes and Noble Nook? Post in our comments section below.