Scott Mueller's Upgrading and Repairing PCs Forum

Hello,

I have not seen this laptop yet, but, I have a friend asking about it.

It is a MacBook Pro, do not know the exact specifics, but there was some extent of a liquid spill.

He is saying the laptop does operate, but, there is no video on the internal screen, but, he does get video if he connects an external video monitor up to the laptop. He states it operates normally in this fashion.

Just on the outside, this would tell me that for the most part, the motherboard should be undamaged, but, then again, there might be some part that is driving the internal monitor that has become damaged.

Any help here?

If the internal display worked before the spill then I would suspect debris from the spill on the flex cable connection on the motherboard for the internal display. I would disconnect the cable, clean both the cable and connector thoroughly, then reconnect and test. Hope it turns out well, Scott.

Fantastic News!!

This story has a happy ending!

After removing the bottom cover, and the LVDS cable from the motherboard and cleaning them (I used an alcohol pad used for cleaning the heat compound from CPU's) and just letting the computer air out over night, then reconnecting the LVDS cable, the screen came to life!.

There did appear however, to be an issue with the hard drive. I got a grey progress bar under the apple logo and the machine would fill the progress bar and just shut off.

I was able to boot to Recovery, and run Disk Utility. (Mac's are really great in this fashion.) But, Recovery was unable to do anything at all with the hard drive. Verify and/or Repair didn't work, nor did Reinstall Mac OS X.

We at the request of my friend, ended up replacing the hard drive with a larger model, and at the same time did a RAM upgrade.

Again, the genius of Apple, booting to Option-R allowed us to do a full install of the Operating System over the Internet!! (How cool is that! - And it does not ask for a product key, it just verifies your Apple ID).

So, I realize this is Upgrading and Repairing "PC's" and a Mac isn't a "PC" but, Scott is and was very helpful in any case.

Thanks very much. (By the way, the Apple store wanted from $400 to $700 for screen replacement and we did this entire repair for $250)

I'm glad it was just the cable connection! Macs essentially are PCs these days, at least hardware-wise. The difference is the software, and I agree that Apple is much more advanced in how they deail with their OS. Microsoft should have learned those lessons years ago. Scott.

Having spent 3 years working for AppleCare on the Mac side, I'm surprised the repair quote wasn't more, considering the liquid damage.

All in all, glad things worked out for your friend. Nice job, mate!

Could you read the drive in another Mac as a secondary I wonder for recovering what is on there if desired?