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Liquid spill to MBP 13 unibody -couple of techie questions...

Bawstun

Bawstun

Suspended
Original poster
Jun 25, 2009
2,374
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My 13 inch MBP of less than of 5 months took an entire glass of diet coke / vodka the other night. A roommate bumped the table my glass was sitting on and it fell off onto the dining table literally RIGHT onto the MBP. Such a big table and it landed right on my laptop...words cannot express the words I was using at the time.

It was charging at the time, and it shut off instantly. I turned it upside down and a PUDDLE of liquid came pouring out onto the paper towels. I held it upside down and removed the back cover but didn't see any liquid to the 'guts' of the computer but dried it anyway. I left it upside down for 5 days to dry with the screen opened and it propped up against a wall, kinda forming an upside down L.

Last night I tried powering it up but when plugged into the charger it doesn't even do anything - no orange light or green light on the charger indicator. The power button doesn't boot the system at all. The only thing it is doing is blinking the white indicator light at the bottom of the laptop.

Is there any hope for a relatively minor repair cost? Could it just be the keyboard/trackpad/top half of the laptop that needs replacing? Could it be the RAM got wet and that's all I need? Or is it likely the entire logic board is fried? Maybe just a battery problem?

I don't know what it takes for that white light indicator to blink so I wasn't sure if it meant there's ANY hope that the logic board was spared. :confused:
 
Bawstun said:
Is there any hope for a relatively minor repair cost?
Click to expand...

Probably not. You're most likely looking at least a new logic board; who knows what else was affected. It sounds like a large amount of liquid made it into the machine.
 
You did all the right things, it might be saved

Can you be more specific about what it does/doesn't do when you press power?
- Does the white light flash ALL the time, or only after you have pressed the power button?
- Can you hear anything - the hard disc or DVD clicking? any signs of "waking up?"

Does the battery indicator bar graph on the left side light up when you press the side button?

If the light is blinking, at least some parts of the MB still work... that's slightly better than nothing at all. If the battery bar graph works you have part of a working power system and juice in the battery.

You might have several problems, hopefully they are all fixable...

1) The blank screen and white blinking light can be a sign of disconnected RAM. You could try taking the back cover off again and re-seating the RAM.

2) No lights on the Magsafe charger indicator might mean you fried the charger. I did this when I dropped water on it (fortunately the Mac was somewhere else at the time). Don't worry about the charger for now, let's see if we can work out what's wrong with the Mac. Later maybe you could borrow a charger off someone else, but I would not recommend doing this yet, there is a small chance you would fry their adapter too!

3) other....
 
The white light flashes slowly whether or not I push power. Well, it started the first time I tried to boot it up since the spill, but now it does it continously - doesn't stop.

The battery graph light indicators do nothing when I push the button. :(

I reseated the ram and and when I took them out one of the indicators is half pink, half white. So looks like liquid did get down to the important parts of the system. Siiiiigh.

It's still unresponsive to the power button.

I'm just not looking forward to bringing it into an apple store, which is a 45 minute drive from where I am, for them to tell me it's 800-900 to replace the important parts of the computer. For another few hundred I might as well just buy a new MBP starting my warranty over - since this one's voided.
 
Yeah, that sounds pretty bad. The white light tells me that some of the lowest layer hardware is still alive, the lack of battery indicators says the power system is not good.

I assume you have tried all the obvious things like an SMC reset (some kind of 4-finger salute, you'll have to google it). SMC manages charging etc, it's a long shot but might help.

If you are very lucky it might just be the power system - that's the high current part which is most likely to short out. Still needs a new logic board though. The trouble is, Apple will charge you $$$ just for diagnosis let alone repair. Even if they fix it today there might still be latent damage in the HDD, RAM, DVD, display etc etc which might pop up in a few months or years.

Maybe a new MBP is the way forward. Can you get the HDD out - hopefully you can save the data that way?

Can't claim on any insurance policy?

I feel your pain. I've never done this, though have come very close. I've dropped mobile phones down the toilet though, several times! Much cheaper but still annoying.
 
Your friend should pay for any repairs.

When I spilled some juice onto my MAcbook Pro, it was totally unresponsive until the following day, when everything worked swimmingly (pun intended). Mine only got a small drop of liquid in the hinge, so considering your Macbook got a glass or so, I would recommend sticking it in a bag of rice, or putting a fan down into the keyboard for at least a week. Then try. Stop trying to use it, it might short the circuits (if they haven't already been shorted, in which case, you are screwed).
 
My fiance's Macbook Air took a full glass from our eight year old...same thing happened. After letting the system dry for three days, I plugged it in and power it up. The bottom row of keys (Z-M) wouldn't work, the track pad button wouldn't work. Everything else was ok.

I took the machine to Apple, and the FIRST thing I said was "Guys I have liquid damage here...my daughter spilled on it and these keys aren't working." The Genius tested it, and said "I'll charge you 200.00 for parts and the repair labor is free because you shot strait with us."

200 bucks later, its flawless. They replaced the keyboard, trackpad and button, and a bunch of wiring. That can't be fun on a macbook air.
 
Sometimes you can get by with a keyboard replacement (I did)
Sometimes you need the logic board too (sux)

With Coke, it is rare to get by with nothing :(
 
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