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ScholarsInk

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 3, 2010
372
437
My apologies for the odd title - I'm not quite sure how to explain it in that space.

I own a 13" 2009 MacBook Pro that I rather stupidly spilled a drink on on the 7th September last year. I turned it off when that happened but then turned it on not long after, which led to a sort of shock and, since then, it has worked just as before except for the screen. I've had to use it with a monitor or TV via HDMI. As a student, I'm lucky that the place I rented last year had an HDTV as otherwise I would have been unable to use my computer.

Two days ago, however, I turned on the computer and the internal display came on after a second of blue flickering. After shut down, the screen was again dead as before upon booting. This was the first time the display had worked since last summer.

Last night, the same thing happened - though when I rebooted into Boot Camp, the display disappeared (it showed the Windows startup screens, but went away right as the login screen would have appeared). Again, after turning off the computer, the display did not turn on upon further start ups.

This morning, I just turned on the computer and the display has again booted. There was just a blue flicker again but otherwise the display seems to be working. I'm fairly certain, though, that when I shut down or perhaps even put my computer to sleep the display will not come on.

Does anyone know what might be causing this? I had assumed that my turning on the computer while wet had caused a shock that burnt out the display connector but somehow, a year later, it seems to be working again if only occasionally.

If there is some way I might ensure the display working, it would be invaluable.

Thank you very much for reading.
 
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It's possible that there's corrosion inside the machine that never got cleaned out, and this is why it did not work. Perhaps the corrosion is chipping off and not shorting things out as much anymore. Did you ever open the machine and clean it?
 
What was the beverage? Soda? Water?

Anything with sugar would be corrosive down the line and should be cleaned at this point. If it was just water then maybe something else is going on in there.
 
The drink did have sugar in it and when I went to an authorised service center, I was informed that there was corrosion.

I didn't attempt to clean it (or open it for any other reason) out of fear of accidentally damaging it further because I really needed the functionality that I did get as long as I could get it.
 
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