Post-coffee spill problems with iMac

[Rocknoggin]

I spilled coffee on my keyboard and I immediately tried to clean it off. As I was running a cloth over the keys the computer was doing that wonky thing it does when you try and activate most of the buttons at once. I know I should have turned the computer off before trying to wipe it down but I assumed there was a serious time issue here. But to keep on the safe side I replaced the coffee-spilled keyboard with an old back-up heyboard.

So now my iMac is doing weird things like not allowing songs to play in my iTunes (the "play" command is activated but the slider isn't moving and the songs don't play). Same with Youtube. When I get to a video it won't allow me to play it. Again, the play button is visibly on but it's not playing. I'm guessing I hit a combination of buttons that gave my iMac the command to not play or activate anything.

I ran a Disk Repair but it said all was good. Should I reset my entire iMac--and how do I do that without losing anything?

Much much thanks for any light you can shed on this.

Brian

 

[harryb2448]

Well it would help greatly if we could guess the model and operating system.

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/news-community-announcements/313284-writing-quality-post.html

However for starters go into System Preferences > Keyboard, Notifications, Sharing, Accessibility etc to see what has been changed whilst wiping the keyboard. Sure sounds like keyboard shortcuts have been activated.

 

[pigoo3]

I could be wrong. But I'm pretty sure that spilling coffee on an iMac USB keyboard should not effect the operation of the computer. It may trash the keyboard…but the computer should be ok. And using another keyboard should return things to normal.

I would try an SMC Reset just in case:

Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)

- Nick

 

[pm-r]

Shut down your iMac and boot up using Safe Boot mode.

Then enable your Keyboard Viewer and check and see if each key shows a response. If so the keyboard in use is probably OK and you have other problems.

Doing a SMC Reset as suggested would be a good suggestion to try.

Then restart and boot up normally.

 

[alicepattinson]

I agree with pigoo
If you spill on the keyboard then you could just replace it with a new one