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spilled milk on macbook pro

J

jungeun

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 2, 2011
5
0
Firstly, I've gone through most of the threads about spilling liquid onto Macbook Pros but none of the cases really had to do with this specific of a question. I apologize if I'm causing any trouble and I'd be thankful for any responses at all. ^___^ I also know that it was irresponsible of me so rub that in my face as much as you want.

So I spilled milk (with frosted flakes) on my keyboard on Wednesday morning at about 12:30 a.m. I immediately turned it over, wiped it down quickly, and turned it off. I considered taking off the battery but I didn't have a screwdriver on me soooo.....I mean, not much got through. I placed it in an upside-down V shape and let it dry for about 41 hours before using a hairdryer (on low, cool mode) from about an arms length away. Then a couple hours later I popped a few keys off and saw that all of the milk had accumulated and dried at the center of the plastic suction/ring and I cleaned off as much as I could from all of the keys. I noticed that there were some strings under a few keys (1-2 per) but I think it's just how the milk dried. It's been 75.5 hours since I spilled the milk and the milk underneath the keys look to have dried completely but I don't know for sure. Should I wait any longer?
 
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I'd say between the proper placement and hair drier that any liquid should be dried by now. Time to turn it on, but don't forget to cross your fingers!
 
I'd say the first thing to do is not to cry over the spilled milk. :p

My general rule that I pass on to anyone with a spill is remove the battery, flip it over, and let it dry for a week, no less. Since it's milk, and I have no idea what kind of residue that could leave, I'd recommend pulling the bottom cover off and see if you see anything on the board, before connecting any type of power.

jW
 
@crazzyeddie: thank you! i think that i'll wait a little longer though because i'm so paranoid lol.

@wordoflife: is there anything i should be looking for? i don't think i have the full ability to fully take the device apart completely....thanks so much!

@mal/jW: thank you for your response! haha i knew someone would say that. the battery is beneath the screws so i didn't bother.....dang it! is this a problem? and if there is something on the board wouldn't it be on the top part? sorry, i'm a bit confused.

edit: i don't have a screwdriver that fits with the screws on the back :/
 
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Yikes... best of luck with it. Sounds like you did the most you could.
 
@vincenz: thanks!

@gregg2: irrelevant but of course.

edit: could someone please explain why it has to be 7 days?
 
7 days specifically isn't really a magic number per se, but hardly anything will take longer than that to evaporate or dry. The important thing is that there is no power flowing through the board while there is liquid on it, because if there is, it can travel through the liquid and short out connections on the board. At this point, since you didn't pull the battery, it's probably too late if there was any liquid on the board. You might as well just give it a try, I guess. Chances are, if anything reached your logic board, it's fried already.

jW
 
@jW: hm, i see. is there is the slightest of a chance that the liquid didn't get to the board and that i should let it dry out further? thanks again for your replies.

edit: i'm still drying it out until Wednesday but i accidentally turned it on yesterday and it worked....so i turned it back off....
 
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Cyber clean

I used to have a similar problem as you - I eat fruits for breakfast, primarily apples, oranges, and bananas, and sometimes because of that my keyboard gets sticky or worse, small orange sacs slip between the keys of my MacBook Pro (I have the 2007 model with the old-style keyboard). What I usually do is use wet tissue to clean the surface and then Cyber Clean to clear up the stuff between the keys.

Most of the time I have breakfast with Google Reader open on my laptop. After a while, I got tired of cleaning my keyboard and made News Anchor to read the news for me, so my dirty hands doesn't even get near the keyboard.
 
Youd think they could put some thin plastic barrier toped with a thin layer of absorbent foam under laptop keyboards, most spills probably arnt a huge amount of liquid and its a common thing to happen.

I guess from apples point of view its a good thing if you trash your logic board, as they can get another sale out of you!
 
1) the keyboard works fine

2) the track pad works fine

3) when i turn on my laptop it loads and then it shuts off. however, it works correctly if i hold down the space bar and power it on....but every ten or so seconds that i don't touch the keyboard/trackpad the "do you want to shut down now" window pops up. it turns off if i don't press the cancel button.

before i thought that i was just being paranoid and that i had turned it off successfully but now i think that the problem is that when i first turned it off after the spill, the computer powered off by itself because of the milk.....and now unless i hit the space bar while i turn it on the computer thinks that it's supposed to turn off as it was supposed to pre-spill. idk. any thoughts?
 
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It sounds like, at the very least, your keyboard (top case including unibody) needs to be replaced. The symptoms you describe are kind of ambiguous, but you may or may not need a logic board repair, as well.

Hope this helps.
 
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