Wash your logic board?........
........may not be as silly as it sounds:
Not that you should expect a high success rate, but for the 20 or so boards that I've 'recently' had in with congealed cola etc in them, washing carefully utilising a fine toothbrush or similar, with a final rinse in distilled water, followed by blow-drying them AND leaving for 48hrs to completely dry in a warm dry cupboard, has had some success - about 25 to 30%. A small compressor with a fine jet is very useful for gently blowing the worst of the obvious moisture out awkward spots like cable connectors, memory slots and coils .... (or air can?), prior to air drying.
To do it properly you have to fully strip the machine and remove the logic and then its cpu heatsinks etc..... you'd be surprised where a tiny bit of goo can hide and carry on causing problems. Thoroughness and not rushing is key to this.
Don't assume its only the logic board at the root of the problem, - contaminated peripheral cable ends can cause all manner of strange effects.
Check everything - an illuminated magnifying lens is very useful for spotting small 'nasties' lodged in awkward places.
ALWAYS be mindful / ultra careful in respect of static damage - earth strap / grounded mat / foil / etc..... even an properly earthed stainless sink should be at zero potential.
Also remember that the membrane type keyboard used on Macbooks can hang onto liquid for weeks trapped between the plastic membranes. You can't get it out or effectively clean it. The 'goo' eventually congeals, often shorting / rotting the tracks.
A 'weird' keyboard will often cause a Macbook to auto shutdown or hang during the boot process which can have you looking elsewhere for the fault, - so eliminate it from the process. Try and find a decent keyboard to test OR use an external keyboard, only using its own one to power-up before quickly disconnecting it. Some models have power-up contacts on the logic board which helps get around the start button issue.
As a working example, 6 months ago I was given an almost new unibody Macbook Pro (about 10 hours use) - written off as completely dead / un-viable repair by Apple after a coffee spill. Stripped completely - everything meticulously washed and cleaned -( 'orrible inside - sticky gunk all over), all allowed to thoroughly dry and carefully re-assembled......... back to life it came!
It did need a replacement keyboard deck (about 20% of keys were dead), but apart from that its purring along happily - and still is 6 mnths later.
So..... is washing likely to resurrect your Macbook?......
Statistically, no, but if you've got nothing else to lose and you feel you are competent and careful enough to do this sort of work, taking your time, not rushing and allowing everything to REALLY dry out, you never know, you seem to stand about a 1 in 4 chance of it coming back to life in a usable fashion...... keyboards excepted - they almost always seem to die permanently, but replacement items seem to be readily available at affordable prices - so that'd be a small price to pay if the Mac was otherwise resurrected.
Point of note:- keep water well away from early (non-unibody) Macbook displays; experience shows that even a small amount of water / wine / whatever, if allowed to dribble down into the lower edge almost always finds its way up between the display glass via capillary action - ruining the display panel as well - be warned!
Hard discs should not be immersed - ever - for any reason, but gunk on the circuit board and edge connectors can be cleaned with a moist 'QTip'..... same with opticals and batteries. Use common sense here!
Hope this helps or inspires someone to get their otherwise dead machine back to life, but I accept no responsibility for what you might do.
If there's nothing to lose, try it by all means - at your own risk..... you might be the lucky one in the 25% bracket!
Regards to all,
JH
