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Spilled water on Macbook pro

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macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 22, 2007
582
1
Southern California
A couple weeks ago I was eating lunch and spilled a good amount of water on my macbook pro, I immediately took out the battery and flipped the Macbook pro over, and dried it out by hand with some paper towels, then I took it out into the sun for an hour or two until it seemed completely dry and I put the battery back in to test it out. It worked fine and I figured since I reacted so quickly it was unaffected. But unfortunately I started to notice a few problems, a few keys are unresponsive (Volume Up/F5, Esc, Right Shift, Up Arrow, Right Arrow) which wasn’t too bad I could live without those (Though it’s annoying). Another thing I noticed was that the battery sometimes acts like its not there when charging (an X in the battery logo) the only way to remedy this is to pop out the battery and put it back in, rarely when its unplugged the computer will just turn off but I believe this is related to the previous problem. All of this was annoying but livable. But today I found that I am now unable to burn dvds, I have no problem reading disks or watching movies but burning (On both my windows partition and OSX) gives me errors. (Though I am able to burn CD's in iTunes). Finding this out was the straw that finally broke the camel's back and has motivated me to seek repairs. I was just wondering how repairable is all this damage, and is there a way I can use my apple care to get this repaired for free (Even though it was completely my fault).

EDIT: I just tried burning a data DVD with iTunes and had no problem so now I am not sure what was wrong before, and I am not even sure it was a water related issue. I still do have issues burning other stuff though.
 
Depends...is there any visible water stains on the outside? Was this regular drinking water you spilled?

Over time, corrosion inside the computer can occur, which slowly leads to problems. Lying wont help, as the tech will open it and see it anyway (i work in tech services..its not the first time someone's lied about what happened, or didnt tell us the whole story.)

sounds like the keyboard will need to be replaced. With that, its easy to see water stains on the underside. From then if I was the tech i'd be suspicious. I'd say it would be risky taking your computer and trying to get it fixed under applecare. Most likely you will have to pay for it unless the tech is willing to work with you. as for the battery you can try SMC reset to see if that would help. All the damage is repairable, but whether or not you can get it under applecare is questionable.
 
They don't cover water damage.

They will charge you for this. I would have let it sit for 2 hours to make sure it was completely dry.

I would try though. How much water did you spill?
 
Apple Care won't cover it. You're supposed to let it dry out for a couple days, you prematurely turned it on. I hope the best for you, it could be $1500 like for the person in the other thread who did the same.
 
aaronw1986 said:
Apple Care won't cover it. You're supposed to let it dry out for a couple days, you prematurely turned it on. I hope the best for you, it could be $1500 like for the person in the other thread who did the same.
Click to expand...

Agreed with this. How much water did you spill? The keyboard has some black film which separates it from the logic board. So if it wasn't too bad, it should be okay (provided you let it dry completely).

Since you have having issues currently - I'd recommend taking the top casing off (it's not that bad - check out ifixit for instructions), and see if there are water stains underneath the keyboard. At least you might have a better idea at the extent of the damage.
 
i poured an entire soy latte onto my mbp (while it was running), but i flipped it, took out the battery, and cut the power immediately. the only thing left to do was rinse it off so that the coffee would not dry inside.....

i disassembled it and washed the parts in the sink, then let it all dry for 3 days in a 90 degree enclosure. :(

it has been fine for almost half a year now :)

I guess the key is to cut the power and never turn it on until it's bone dry - most of the parts are washed prior during manufacturing, but you want to avoid letting minerals and other deposits dry on the components.
 
When you spill stuff, the best thing to do is to flip it, shut it off immediately, battery out, and then run deionized water through it (if you spilled something sticky like Coke or coffee) and let dry for DAYS near a radiator. You turned it on too quickly, 1 hour is not enough for it to dry completely, still lots of water residue and condensation.
 
You might want to open up the entire chassis and dry each part separately. The Kapton tapes don't work well wet; the thermal paste will dry and crack; and the cable connects will rust.
 
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