{"id":12,"date":"2013-07-17T16:27:52","date_gmt":"2013-07-17T21:27:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimandnoreen.com\/?p=12"},"modified":"2013-07-18T10:48:55","modified_gmt":"2013-07-18T15:48:55","slug":"reviving-a-drowned-laptop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimandnoreen.com\/?p=12","title":{"rendered":"Reviving a drowned laptop"},"content":{"rendered":"

My friend spilled a glass of water into her 13″ MacBook Pro.\u00a0 She had tried (unsuccessfully) to dry it out by sticking it in a bag of rice, followed up by a blast from a blow dryer.\u00a0 The laptop would not turn on at all.\u00a0 The battery was installed but fully depleted.\u00a0 At that stage it was too late for her to heed my general advice for soaked electronics:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Turn it off<\/li>\n
  2. Remove the battery, if possible<\/li>\n
  3. Open the case, if possible<\/li>\n
  4. Seek professional advice before<\/strong> attempting to turn it on again!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Oh well . . .<\/p>\n

    With slim hopes of success, I set out to see if the laptop was salvagable.\u00a0 As usual, iFixit <\/a>had excellent teardown instructions.\u00a0\u00a0Typical of\u00a0Apple products, taking the MacBook apart was a lengthy, tedious experience.\u00a0 I got the case open and shook out enough rice to make a batch of paella.\u00a0 It seemed that the water had migrated directly to the bottom of the laptop where the logic board is.\u00a0 So the worst case scenario looked like a new logic board, which would run around $650 unless we could find a better deal on a used part.<\/p>\n

    One\u00a0hour and a couple dozen screws later the logic board was out.<\/p>\n

    \"macpro-logicboard\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    As far as I could tell there were no burned components on the board, so perhaps the apparent short was correctable.\u00a0 However, there was white corrosion\/residue present in several places.<\/p>\n

    \"macpro-logicboard-1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    I managed to clean the board up with a new medium-bristle toothbrush, working carefully to apply just enough pressure to dislodge the corrosion but not enough to pop off any of the surface mount components.\u00a0 I reinstalled the cleaned up board, reassembled the laptop and crossed my fingers.<\/p>\n

    \"happymac\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    Voila!\u00a0 It’s alive!\u00a0 One happy Mac and one happy friend.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    My friend spilled a glass of water into her 13″ MacBook Pro.\u00a0 She had tried (unsuccessfully) to dry it out by sticking it in a bag of rice, followed up by a blast from a blow dryer.\u00a0 The laptop would not turn on at all.\u00a0 The battery was installed but fully depleted.\u00a0 At that stage […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[7,5],"tags":[48,49,6],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8sNNV-c","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":304,"url":"https:\/\/jimandnoreen.com\/?p=304","url_meta":{"origin":12,"position":0},"title":"13\" Retina MacBook Pro Retina won't boot, fan running full blast","date":"March 8, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"So this repair is mildly interesting. \u00a0The user's late 2012 MacBook Pro just wouldn't start up one morning. \u00a0It would get as far as a \"missing boot disk\" icon and shortly thereafter the fans started running full blast. Apple Diagnostics recognized that an SSD was installed but was unable to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Apple"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":307,"url":"https:\/\/jimandnoreen.com\/?p=307","url_meta":{"origin":12,"position":1},"title":"Resurrecting a 17\" MacBook Pro with a heat gun","date":"March 15, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"So the dreaded day came when my beloved \"late 2011\" 17 inch MacBook Pro died.\u00a0 The screen wigged out while it was in use, then it would only boot halfway before stopping at a gray screen.\u00a0 From experience, I knew that it was suffering from the dreaded AMD GPU logic\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Apple"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":347,"url":"https:\/\/jimandnoreen.com\/?p=347","url_meta":{"origin":12,"position":2},"title":"Why Backups Matter (even when they don't matter)","date":"May 30, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Apple continues its multi-year assault on my beloved \"late 2011\" 17 inch MacBook Pro. First by shipping it with a famously defective logic board, which I learned to repair by periodically baking and now by stymying my efforts to to restore backups to it. When the 17-incher's hard disk started\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Apple"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":69,"url":"https:\/\/jimandnoreen.com\/?p=69","url_meta":{"origin":12,"position":3},"title":"Did you hear about the Rabbi who didn't charge for circumcisions?","date":"August 1, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"He only took tips! I don't charge friends for repairing their electronics, which I'm always glad to do and genuinely enjoy. \u00a0But I'll happily accept a bottle of wine as a token of appreciation. \u00a0Sometimes people are\u00a0really happy to get their stuff fixed. Look at the pile of swag that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Apple"","img":{"alt_text":"Booty!","src":"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/jimandnoreen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/20130801-133502-768x1024.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":331,"url":"https:\/\/jimandnoreen.com\/?p=331","url_meta":{"origin":12,"position":4},"title":"Reflow Madness","date":"August 12, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Over the past several months, I did a few more reflow repairs with my trusty heat gun.\u00a0 I successfully resurrected a Beats Pill bluetooth speaker but it failed again after a few weeks.\u00a0 Another Pill is still working okay.\u00a0 I rescued a 15\" MacBook Pro with video problems but had\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Apple"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":178,"url":"https:\/\/jimandnoreen.com\/?p=178","url_meta":{"origin":12,"position":5},"title":"Microsoft Surface Pro 3 first impressions","date":"January 16, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"My office is replacing its aging fleet of HP 620 notebooks with Surface Pro 3\u00a0 (256 GB, Intel Core i5) tablets. \u00a0Each tablet will be deployed with an optional keyboard cover and docking station. \u00a0This is the middle-of-the-road model, which is powerful enough to run most business applications but not\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reviews"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimandnoreen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimandnoreen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimandnoreen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimandnoreen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimandnoreen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/jimandnoreen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17,"href":"https:\/\/jimandnoreen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions\/17"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimandnoreen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimandnoreen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimandnoreen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}