Spilt into macbook, keyboard not working

[BlueVoid]

So the unfortunate event of a spillage happened to my poor 3 (or now almost 4 year old) 17" Macbook Pro. I was carrying some overnight supplies in my laptop bag.. yes, not the brightest idea, and some face cleanser spilt out. It didn't look like a ton got on the computer and it booted up fine, so I thought I got lucky.

Today I booted it up and I got some awful beeping noises, kind of like a PC speaker type, and the keyboard is all messed up. A few of the keys work, but some not at all and others type different letters. Also the speakers didn't seem to be working.

Strapped for cash as it is, I'm really trying to avoid buying a new laptop. I took everything apart, including taking out the keyboard and fully dismantled that cleaning everything off with rubbing alcohol. I put everything back together and hoped for the best. The speakers seem to be working better, but if I start typing it eventually starts beeping at me again (same beeps as before). It stops once I hit one of the keys. The speakers/sound seem to be working fine.

I can get a replacement keyboard, but I want to be sure that it would fix the problem. My concern is that the connector on the motherboard, or some other chip is damaged and replacing the keyboard won't fix anything. hooking up a usb keyboard works fine, but again this isn't really addressing the issue.

My question is, does this sound like a problem isolated to the keyboard, or am I in the market for a new computer?

Thanks.

 

[movieboy23]

I really hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if you're having problems with both the keyboard and the speaker, it appears that you may have some corrosion on the logic board that wasn't remedied with the rubbing alcohol. Did you fully deconstruct the machine and turn over the logic board to see if there was any corrosion there? If not, you may try that as a last ditch effort to save the machine.

Otherwise, I would just double-check that the logic board is toast by having the geniuses at the Apple Store do a hardware diagnostic on the machine, in which case you may be in the market for a new machine. I just don't want you to invest another $200+ for a new keyboard when that's only a temporary measure.

If that's the case, I guess the only silver lining is that you may be able to get some money for your machine if you sold the LCD (the second most valuable part) and the upper/lower case on eBay.

Good luck.

 

[BlueVoid]

Thanks for the input. I was leaning that way anyhow. I think what I'll do is by a super cheap pc laptop to hold me over until after my move.

I kind of want to keep the MacBook around and just use an external keyboard, just in case I need access to Mac os for some reason. Is it possible to sell off the display and hook up an external monitor to it? Essentially turning it into a desktop unit.