I Spilled Liquid On my mac, now it cuts out!?

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I was at a friends house and i spilled mountain dew on my mac. I almost right away shut off so then i flipped the mac and waited an hour. then i turned it on and it worked, then it cut out. Then i decided to with another week. I turn on the mac book pro late 2011 and it cuts out after 5 minutes. I have a DJ gig with this mac Wednesday and i really need it back and ready, Please HELP!
 

chscag

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If you want to make it to your DJ gig, you're probably going to need to buy a new MacBook Pro, and hope you can get your data off the hard drive of the ruined MacBook Pro. Spills are unpredictable but almost always turn out bad especially with something spilled on it such as sweet sugary Mountain Dew. Sorry I can't offer any better news. We have an entire long thread all about spills that you can read through if you like, but the bottom line is that unless you were extremely lucky, you're looking at getting a new machine.
 
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unless you were extremely lucky, you're looking at getting a new machine.
What if i was to be extremely lucky, how would i get it fixed, and would there be anyway to get my thousands of songs off the mac
 
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I was at a friends house and i spilled mountain dew on my mac. I almost right away shut off so then i flipped the mac and waited an hour. then i turned it on and it worked, then it cut out. Then i decided to with another week. I turn on the mac book pro late 2011 and it cuts out after 5 minutes. I have a DJ gig with this mac Wednesday and i really need it back and ready, Please HELP!

Hello and welcome to the forum! :) Please check out the official Liquid Spill Tread for many pages of comments, advice, etc. - unfortunately, your laptop is likely damaged permanently - you can look at the posts on the link or see what others post here, but I doubt that the laptop will be ready for your DJ gig - I hope that you have your important files/data backed up and that you can transfer them to another machine for that date. Hope that I'm wrong but you likely need to visit an Apple store or a credible Apple repair shop for an estimate of the damage and repair costs. Dave

Addendum: Chscag beat me to the draw, but seems like our comments are similar - sorry!
 

chscag

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What if i was to be extremely lucky, how would i get it fixed, and would there be anyway to get my thousands of songs off the mac

Generally, the repair for a liquid spill is to replace the logic board which can be expensive. An Apple genius bar appointment can give you an estimate. Getting your music off the hard drive (if it hasn't been ruined) would involve removing the hard drive from your MacBook Pro and placing it in a portable USB carrier or using an adapter and copying the music to a good working machine.
 

Rod


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Pull the HDD out before you damage it further, mount it in an external enclosure and restore your data to a new computer or use another computer to copy it to an external HD using Carbon Copy Cloner. In the short term though if it is undamaged, mounted in an enclosure and you have another MBP available you can connect it to via USB cable then you can choose it as the startup drive for the other computer and you will have your computer back. Just like a clone. It will however be a bit slower.
I suppose I should ask, do you already have a backup of some sort?
Unfortunately repairing what you have may turn out to be more expensive than buying a new one in the long run.
 
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chas_m

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For future reference, I suspect Mountain Dew is THE worst thing this side of hydrochloric acid you can spill on a Mac.

The good news is that your hard drive is PROBABLY okay, but your computer is probably toast.
 

Rod


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Even worse that Lysol? No kidding, maybe we should have a rating for some of the worst liquids you can tip on your laptop keyboard. Call me paranoid but I wont have a liquid, be it in a glass, bowl, can, cup or open bottle on the same surface as my laptop.
 
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Spot on Rod. My vote would go to tea, full of tannic acid and sugar. The problem is colin it may hold together for weeks, months, days or hours but with Mountain Dew on its innards, it will go down.
 
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MacInWin

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Anything with sugar, even better with sugar and acid. I'm thinking lemonade. That ought to just about kill everything inside pretty well.
 
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I would also start keeping Time Machine backups, which would make it a snap to get all your files and settings back exactly as they were. I'm truly shocked at how many people don't have any backup strategy at all.
 

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