Firstly, I don't expect any sympathy for letting my 4 year old spill orange juice on my MBA...
But following this incident, and a period of about 3 weeks with the computer off, I decided to power it up and see what would happen. Amazingly, it started and, after installing a new battery, appeared to be working pretty much perfectly in almost every respect. I'd left the one issue until last to sort out - the sticky keys - as it was obviously going to be the easy bit! Little did I know...
So a week or so ago, I decided to sit down for a couple of hours, remove each key, clean it, put it back together, and have my lovely MBA back in full working order.
However, once I'd replaced the keys which I'd cleaned, and switched it on, nether the keyboard nor the trackpad worked (with the obvious exception of the power key). I'm stumped, as I did absolutely nothing to it other than clean the underside of the keys.
Now, when I turn it on, the fan starts running almost immediately, it boots very slowly and then runs very, very slowly. I've plugged an external keyboard and mouse in and confirmed that both USB ports work, as does the power supply and battery. I ran the performance monitor and kernel runs at about 120% which, from what I've read, is high.
I've managed to reset PRAM (although am aware that this wouldn't necessarily help, but it proved that the computer can do stuff), but want to carry out both hardware tests and SMC resets before I abandon the computer to a skip or repair shop.
My question, therefore, is how to do an SMC reset without an internal keyboard? Is it possible to do this with a windows keyboard plugged in (and if so, which keys)? And similarly, as it refused to do the hardware test using the "D" on restart, is there another way of doing this?
For machines with removable batteries, the reset can be done by removing it, holding the power button for 5 seconds, and then putting it back together. I assume that this essentially drains any residual power out of the circuits, but I guess it might be a programmed function. Can anyone confirm that this works for MBAs as well?
Thanks for reading - any suggestions welcomed (well, almost any...).
Tiptopp
But following this incident, and a period of about 3 weeks with the computer off, I decided to power it up and see what would happen. Amazingly, it started and, after installing a new battery, appeared to be working pretty much perfectly in almost every respect. I'd left the one issue until last to sort out - the sticky keys - as it was obviously going to be the easy bit! Little did I know...
So a week or so ago, I decided to sit down for a couple of hours, remove each key, clean it, put it back together, and have my lovely MBA back in full working order.
However, once I'd replaced the keys which I'd cleaned, and switched it on, nether the keyboard nor the trackpad worked (with the obvious exception of the power key). I'm stumped, as I did absolutely nothing to it other than clean the underside of the keys.
Now, when I turn it on, the fan starts running almost immediately, it boots very slowly and then runs very, very slowly. I've plugged an external keyboard and mouse in and confirmed that both USB ports work, as does the power supply and battery. I ran the performance monitor and kernel runs at about 120% which, from what I've read, is high.
I've managed to reset PRAM (although am aware that this wouldn't necessarily help, but it proved that the computer can do stuff), but want to carry out both hardware tests and SMC resets before I abandon the computer to a skip or repair shop.
My question, therefore, is how to do an SMC reset without an internal keyboard? Is it possible to do this with a windows keyboard plugged in (and if so, which keys)? And similarly, as it refused to do the hardware test using the "D" on restart, is there another way of doing this?
For machines with removable batteries, the reset can be done by removing it, holding the power button for 5 seconds, and then putting it back together. I assume that this essentially drains any residual power out of the circuits, but I guess it might be a programmed function. Can anyone confirm that this works for MBAs as well?
Thanks for reading - any suggestions welcomed (well, almost any...).
Tiptopp