Ready for a revelation? A concept that you’ve never considered before? Well here it is: never ever, ever pour a glass of wine into your Macbook keyboard. Or, more practically put, be extremely careful when there’s a drink of any kind near your laptop. If a spill occurs, and you don’t act quickly enough, you’ll find yourself staring at a massive bill for a new logic board, hard-drive, battery, and anything in between.
Accidents do happen — so plan on it. What’s more important is that you learn exactly what to do when these spills inevitably occur.
Step 1. Don’t Freeze. Unplug!
Ahhhh! The wife (meaning, you) accidentally spilled wine all over your keyboard. From personal experience, I can assure you that, for some odd reason, your first instinct with a massive computer spill is to freeze for five seconds or so, in shock. Don’t do this! Luckily Apple laptops are pretty helpful about automatically shutting down to prevent as many issues as possible before they happen. The more recent laptops even have liquid detection…though I’m certain that Apple is more interested in voiding your warranty than protecting you. For those uninformed, most laptop warranties do not cover spills.
Nonetheless, don’t waste a single second. Quickly unplug the computer, and shut it down.
The walls and carpet may have liquid on them as well, but ignore that. The computer is far more important right now.
Step 2. Flip that Sucka
The next step, which should occur within seconds of beginning Step 1, is to flip the laptop upside down, into an L-shape. Gravity will then force as much liquid to drain out of the keyboard as possible. Make sure that you lay it on a towel so that it can soak up the liquid.
Let gravity do its job. Immediately flip the laptop into an L-shape.
Step 3. Open the Back
Using a tiny screw driver, unscrew the back-side of your laptop. This will, of course, vary, depending upon which model you’re using. I’m sure you can figure it out.
Particularly on Macs, not all of the screws are the same size. Make a note of which screw goes where.
Step 4. Remove the Battery and Hard Drive
Before progressing, ensure your livelihood and touch some metal objects nearby to remove any potential static electricity from your body.
Needless to say, batteries and liquids — especially sugary, acidic liquids — don’t play nice together. Wherever yours is located on your laptop, remove it as quickly as possible. Next, get the hard drive out as well. We don’t want to risk any liquid seeping in, and corrupting your file system!
And now that you know how easy it is to remove a hard drive, don’t ever again pay a person to upgrade your hard drive. It only takes a moment to do yourself. ;)
Step 5. Dry the Insides
With a paper towel of some sort, begin cleaning the insides of your computer. Depending upon how much liquid was spilled, this may either be a quick or lengthy process. For yours truly, it took around ten minutes to clean everything.
Some people prefer to use a hair dryer to clean the insides. This one is up to you; however, I’d encourage you to not do so. Play it safe and use a towel. We don’t want to risk frying the insides.
Step 6. Rubbing Alcohol and Cotton
Next, we need to continue removing as much sugar and acid as possible from the logic board. Otherwise, over time, it can begin to corrode the wiring. Yeah, this isn’t good!
Using rubbing alcohol and a cotton swab, begin dabbing any stained areas — but be gentle. If you have access to the backside of your keyboard, clean that area as well. Unfortunately, on the newer Macbook Pro models, it’s extremely difficult to access this section. With past models, it was quite easy to remove the keyboard entirely, for cleaning purposes. Unfortunately, that’s no longer the case.
Rubbing alcohol will help dissolve any remaining acid or sugar on the logic board.
Step 7. Leave it Alone
Anxiety is a dangerous thing. Resist the urge to determine whether or not you’ve destroyed your laptop, and keep it off for a minimum of 72-120 hours (3-5 days). This will allow any remaining liquid to dry/evaporate first. Make sure that, while its drying, you keep the battery outside of the computer. This is mostly a precaution.
Keep the computer off for 3-5 days — no questions asked. Do not turn it on during this window.
Step 8. Cross Your Fingers
After 72-120 hours, reconnect the battery, screw everything back in, cross your fingers, say a prayer, and turn on the computer. Particularly if you’re using a new Macbook Pro (2009+ models), you’ve done everything you can do. With hope, and more often than not, it’ll chime, and start-up like a charm. However, if the battery is dead, or the hard drive is corrupted, you’re next best option is to take it in for official repair. Of course, this will somewhat depend upon how skilled you are, when working under the hood.
About the Author
Jeffrey Way — me…yes, I’m speaking in third person — recently committed a Cardinal Sin, and caused a massive wine spill into his Macbook Pro. Had he not followed these exact steps, he’d be forking over another life savings for a new Mac. Luckily, that was not the case.
Thanks for reading. Should the same ever happen to you, I hope this guide will help a bit!
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Use a ThinkPad! They have tubes in the inside which guide the fluid to the bottom, where it harmlessly flows out again. You still may want to clean those tubes if you spilled coke or ice tea, though ;) Btw, IF you have a ThinkPad (this is probably only true for the good, more expensive models, nor for a $500 ThinkPad. Yep, they have those nowadays. Don’t buy. If you want a ThinkPad, buy a “real” one) AND you spill something on it, DON’T TURN IT UPSIDE DOWN, that only makes things worse. Let it come out on the bottom of the device. This is what the official manuals say. And I do know from a friend of mine who spilled water into his ThinkPad (a T400) that all he did was turning it off and waiting for the water to come out again. Worked like a charm. That’s what you pay for in a ThinkPad. That half-eaten apple is what you pay for in a Mac.
Being both a current and past owner of numerous Thinkpad T-series models and Macbook Pros simultaneously, I can assure you, there are many many other faults with the Thinkpad that cause me to almost always favor my Macbook. But let me tell you, it sure gets irritating hearing you Thinkpad owners preach this without any such consideration or knowledge of such things.
I’ll live with the risk of spill damage in exchange for my other preferences. I’ve had someone spill a full cup of coffee on mine 2 weeks after I bought it, did all of the above almost instinctively, worked perfectly fine. Also had a supremely drunk roommate piss on an old Dell laptop when he thought the computer chair was a toilet. Repeated the above similarly (with a bit more disgust) and again, everything was fine.
The key is simply that you act quickly and pull all sources of electricity. No need to pull the hard drive – it’s sealed anyways. You won’t get data corruption unless the controller on it gets fried by the liquids, in which case many other things in your laptop would probably already be fried.
Or visit alcoholics anonymous (it’s better to prevent then cure). Just kidding.
:)
Don’t works! I tried it but then my MacBook wanted to drink coffee… :D
Much as the hardcore coding posts are appreciated this is a welcome addition to nettuts! A cautionary tale if ever there was one. I’ve revived numerous phones from being dropped into beverages (and toilets, don’t ask) but not yet had to treat my macbook. This made me laugh (only because of the previous stated fact) but made me think about the glass of wine stood next to my workhorse last night.
At least there is now a Heimlich manoeuvre for wet macbooks! Someone should turn this into an infographics style (laminated of course) help sheet.
Sent to Apple Service Center is the clever ways ;)
well, i disagree. the point is you’re trying to prevent paying the book-in fee (in australia anyway) and also – like many service centers say – “your logic board is not working, you need a new one, give us a couple of grand and we’ll get it good as new”. they will probably resell yours to someone else or to yourself without you knowing it! i’ve had bad experiences with some twice.
I don’t think Apple covers liquid damage, but still – doesn’t opening your computer like that void the warranty?
Yeah, I believe if you take out the battery, it voids the warranty. But if you spill liquid into it, that should also void it.
Fantastic article, probably the most helpful advice Ive read all week.
Sadly I lost my MacBook to gravy 2 years ago, Momma’s Sunday roast was never the same!
Get a Toshiba,it has spill-proof keyboard:)
If you had enough common sense you wouldn’t have wine near your Macbook :P
And what would also apply to every other liquid… Don’t say that you NEVER drink beside the computer, and if you do say that, there are two possibilities…
A. You are lying
B. You are some guy who never actually uses a computer and just is here by mistake XD
Either way, haven’t met someone who didn’t drink beside the computer :)
Jeff, great post! I took my camera out the rain one time to try for a shot and yeah… I actually got water in the touchscreen viewfinder… As I was rewinding the footage, I could see air bubbles in my screen. I followed those exact steps pretty much and all was ok… I will say the waiting part sucked the worst cause… ah… what if I really just totally ruined it? Is it ready now, ya think? What if I just… no, I can’t…. bah!
Yeah – the waiting part is easily the worst. :)
You know I rather think Macs are resilient to being soaked. At the start of the year I dropped my MacBook into the bath for a second time! (I was watching a movie while I soaked in the tub) The laptop was completely submerged and lots of water came out of it when I rescued it.
Having said that, I am sitting here writing this comment on that very MacBook! There appear to have been no ill effects to date – touch wood! But hey, I no longer use my laptop in the tub. I’ve reverted to dropping books in the tub, it’s far less expensive! :-)
http://www.beforeiforget.co.uk/2010/say-hello-to-mermac/
And I expected to read a post about using the Wine Windows Compatibility Layer (http://www.winehq.org/) on a Mac book. I have to admit that I am quite amused by my mistake :)
You say your laptop would not have survived if you didn’t do these exact steps. I’m wondering if you pulled out the camera at the time of said spillage or just decided to reinact it for old-times sake. :)
Reenactment. :)
Good guide i had the same problem a year agor, my macbook had no problem starting up , but since then the backlight in the keybord is dimmer and the keys are a little sticky. I Agree that it’s very difficult to clean them up :)
if you don’t have a ThinkPad, flip it first! disconnecting the power will probably happen as a result of flipping it. Since the unit will still be powered with the battery and shutting it down can take several seconds. A few years ago I was installing a new monitor for my client and dragged the power cable across their desktop with a Big Gulp positioned close by, tipping it over onto the Dell. I flipped it within a couple of seconds of the spill and I think that’s what saved the laptop and my relationship with that client ;) Hesitate and you lose !
Funny stuff! Too bad i would panic and try to get to this post first before shutting my laptop down. Im such a mess ;c
Remember to BLOT not scrub or wipe with the paper towel on the inside. be gentile!
great article
extremely useful to me and others
thanks for sharing :D
I was wondering, what is the mac model jeff is using. 15″ ?. I want to buy a mac book but 15.4″ mac book’s native resolution is 1440*900. My current laptop -> 1366*768. Its kinda hard to look at it (with windows) :)
Hows the 1440*900 doing for you guys?
P.S:- Watch Jeffery’s screen casts and you’ll buy a mac :D
awesome post !
yesterday i washed my white macbook with a sponge soaping it very well and turned it on like a sharrrrrm
i always though that it has some isolate things liquids from electrical circuit
Well it seems that we have to add another bad thing about wine :D
thank god that i don’t drink wine :D :D
That’s wonderful, just keep it up.
Sorry to bump this old thread, and thanks to Jeff for the brilliant tut.
I have a bigger problem. I fired my MBP up on Sunday morning (23rd Jan 2011), having not had it on since the previous Thursday. It fired up briefly then went off. I figured it was out of charge so plugged the charger in. It came on, but the battery symbol was showing “No battery present” If I unplugged the charger it immediately went off.
Plugged the charger in again and it worked, but the backlight on the keyboard only lit the middle section of the keyboard.
Everything worked fine while the charger was plugged in, anyway to cut a short story short, my partner admitted he’d been on my MBP on the Friday night and had spilt a glass of cider on it, so he turned it off and went to bed.
What I want to know is, do I have any chance of cleaning it up after it laying dormant for 4 days, with no flipping it to get the liquid out, and if I can clean it up what’s the best way of going about it.
Thanks in advance, and has anyone done this before.
@Scooby – You might be out of luck. Is the keyboard responding at all? Are all the keys working? You might try opening it up and cleaning any left over liquid.
Be sure to slap your room-mate for spilling cider, and then making zero effort to clean up the mess.
Thanks Jeff for the quick reply. The keyboard is working, all keys are functional, but only the middle section of the keyboard has the backlight. The MBP works if the charger is plugged in, but the battery power is showing “No Battery Available” when I right click on it.
Do you have any detailed instuctions for stripping it down and restoring it.
My roomie has been duly slapped and will pay for any necessary repairs for being a knob.
Thanks in advance
Spilled Coke on my Acer Aspire once, and to be honest I didn’t have to do much to get things working again. Maybe I just got lucky, but all I did was turn it off and let things dry off for 10 minutes or so. I believe I also sprayed some water or alcohol as to dilute the acid.
Oh and I still drink beside my laptop. I’m more careful now, but I can still easily spill it. Guess it’s a bad habit I will never break.
Hi thank you so much for the post. My accident happened just a. Few minutes ago so I’m trying really hard to remain positive! But your post gives me some hope that the situation will be salvaged! Many thanks all the way from SA
Something you may want to point out to your readers is that regardless if you send it in for service, there are over 70 Liquid Spill Indicators in the most recent MacBook Pro from 2011. The official article from Apple detailing what I just said can be found here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3425
Hope this helps =)
I once spilled coffe over a computer, and the first thing the helpdesk asked me was: “With or without sugar?” With would habe been really bad news, I understand.