Spill on Macbook - possibly failed hard drive

Hi people,

My brother (no seriously, it wasn't me!) recently spilt half a pint of cider over the keyboard of his 3 year old MacBook Pro. We let it dry for a few weeks, then I took it apart and cleaned with damp cotton buds some of the sections I knew would be ok to clean.

It was then left to dry for a few more weeks before I put it back together again and tried to turn it on. When pressing the power button, the light comes on for a couple of seconds before making a fairly high-pitched electronic fail noise and then nothing else happens. The hard drive wirrs slightly between turning the unit on, and it dying.

Thinking the problem could be in the hard drive I tried all kinds of methods I could see to make it boot from the CD drive but nothing would work. In fact, it won't event accept a CD.

Can anyone help? Does it sound like the hard drive needs replacing or is it more serious than that?

Thanks in advance.

pppmmunuay said:

Can anyone help? Does it sound like the hard drive needs replacing or is it more serious than that?

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To be honest...I'm afraid it's probably a lot worse than just the hard drive! Spilling half a pint of cider over the keyboard is a pretty serious spill!

Most likely the logic board is fried...which on a 3 year-old Macbook Pro is probably not really worth paying for a replacement. Start looking for a new or "new used" Macbook Pro...and put together an e-Bay auction for the "dead" Macbook Pro.

On the positive side...the hard drive may actually still be operable. You could install it in an external hard drive case (to see if it still works)...and hopefully you will be able to get access to any important files on it.

Good luck,

- Nick