MacBook + Water Damage...HELP

[mwrenn]

First off, I am new to the forum and have learned more today about macs that I could have believed. THANKS!!

I have searched this forum and read all of the posts about trying to fix my wife's MacBook that has sustained a water spill and still have a couple more questions. The liquid WAS water and my wife let it dry for four days prior to turning it back on. When she did turn it back on, it seemed to work fine for about a week and then started to have problems: rainbow pinwheel for minutes when launching applications and then it died...like dead...will not turn on.
After reading all of the posts I could, I started the teardown. When I pulled the memory, the leads when caked with corrosion. I cleaned them thoroughly with isopropyl alcohol and continued the teardown to see what the logic board looked like. Surprisingly, everything looked great. I even pulled the fan to ensure that I did not have any pooled hard water deposits and nothing. So, I put her all back together and tried to power it on and got the same results: when I depress the power button the light on the front comes on and goes off. If I hold it down, it tries but eventually powers down.

I have given my wife my MacBook and went out and got a new MBP but, I sure would like to get old MacBook running and let the kids have it for school.


1. Must I somehow clean the corrosion off the connection for the memory? if so, how?
2. Any experience with taking it to Best Buy for repair?

THANKS in advance for your help!

 

[wndrby]

That macbook is not easily repairable. Apple would repair it for close to what a new machine would cost and cover the repair for 90 days.

 

[1direction]

From what I have been researching, when uni body macbooks and or pros go through spill damage the powerbutton gets damaged also, so you might have to change the top case also. the way to test it is short the power pins and see if the laptop starts if it does you know for sure that the power button is damaged.


good luck

 

[iThinkergoiMac]

The RAM chips often come with a white grease on the ram chip contacts. This is easily mistaken for corrosion (I thought this at first too). I'm betting you simply found the grease. Did it come off incredibly easy, seemingly too easy for actual corrosion?