Computer spiraling down trailing thick black smoke with sound of screaming cats

I believe there has been a suitably long period of time since I dumped coffee into my wife's laptop keyboard so we can safely say "I didn't do it!"

Yesterday afternoon, when I awoke the upstairs laptop from its slumbers, it erupted with hideous screaming and rattling sounds from under my right palm - presumably the location of the hard drive. My first action was to grab a memory stick and copy off anything I thought might be unique to the hard drive. I then finished the e-mail I'd started before the caterwauling began. Although frequently interrupted by more episodes of screeching I was able, due to my infinite patience, to complete my note and send it off. At this point the keyboard and mouse no longer had any effect and I was left staring at the catatonic freeze of the hotmail screen. I turned off the computer and figured I'd let my wife find out about this in her own good time.

When the moment came I was tempted to say it was fine last time I used it. However I instead bragged how at least I'd been able to create much loud and unpleasant noise while she was only able raise a black screen with an ominous little box with cryptic signs and a single option - OK? Clearly the answer was NOT OK, but we pushed it anyway - and nothing very interesting happened - clearly we were not in Wonderland. Another reboot and a DOS error message, with a very small number (no doubt signifying a core, base level, probably fatal, fault), came up. Another NOT OK, for sure. This time we shut it off supposing we have entered the market for a new computer. Unless we get some helpful advice about possible repairs to a five year old laptop computer that has had a cup of coffee poured into it, but that was, like, a year ago. And I did do a pretty good job of pouring it out again quickly.