Chosen Solution
I recently spilled water on my computer and did not remove the bottom casing, much less the battery, as I now know I should have. I am able to start the computer and get to my desktop however at start up the fan immediately begins and the computer loads VERY slowly. Once completely booted, the same continues. I have turned off all “at start up” settings for all apps. Here are the stats for my computer from iStatPro and SmartUtility: istatpro CPU: system - 90% +/- HD: U - 79.92 GB F - 169.8 GB MEMORY: Free - 2.45 GB TEMP: HD - 85 CPU - 94 Heatsink - 88 Northbridge - 86 FANS: Exhaust - 6200 rpm +/- BATTERY: Health - NAN UPTIME: Load average: 8.89, 11.86… SMART UTILITY: SMART STATUS: Passed Since the computer is not able to run unless hooked up to the charger, I am aware I need to purchase a new battery. My next step is figuring out where I need to start in regards to RAM (I think this is where the issue lies in slowness) and the fans (I’m stumped on this one). Any and all help would be absolutely wonderful. Thank you in advance! Tristan Update Thanks for the suggestions! It was definitely water that was spilled on the computer. Promise. :) I will be cracking this bad boy open this morning to see what going on. Bc it was water, I’m guessing, as Mayer said, there won’t be residue but I will definitely take a good look and let you guys know what I find. Update after opening the casing there is visible residue on the motherboard. i will be proceeding to clean per ABCellars. Update cleaned motherboard and still having issues with slow speeds and constant fan. will be testing RAM. Update i tested RAM and still no good. I am in the middle of AHT. I’m thinking there may be an issue with a heat sensor which is kicking up kernel_task CPU usage. Update I have reset PRAM and SMC to no avail. I ran the AHT and got the following code: 4SNS/1/C0000008:TN1D–124 What does this mean? I have a kernel_task that is eating up CPU usage (over 170%) with over 60 threads. I have reset the heatsink with thermal paste and made sure all things were connected appropriately on the logicboard. I have also purchased a new battery to replace the old in case that had an effect on performance and there is still no change. HELP??? Update After replacing the motherboard and seeing no improvement in computer performance, I replaced the airport card. There seems to be some issue with my airport card connection. After completely disconnecting the airport card connection and reverting to using a wifi usb dongle for internet connection, I have had no more kernel panics. While this is only a temporary fix to the problem, I have a running computer that is now kernel panic free and fully functional/portable.
I would open it up, remove the battery. Remove both RAM chips, then, one at a time, reinstall the RAM in each of the slots booting each time and checking the speed. This is to test both the slots and the RAM. Also try starting up from your system installation disk and check the speed to see if the hard drive could be adding to the problem.
The place to start is dealing with the liquid damage. If you don’t have the residues from that cleaned up you are going to chase ghost and really can’t actually determine if any parts are bad. Remove all power sources from your laptop. Push the power button for 10 seconds to help dissipate the capacitors. Then let it sit for an hour to ensure the capacitors have lost their charge. Next remove your motherboard and clean both sides of it 90% or better rubbing alcohol or distilled water and a tooth brush. All are obtainable from your Pharmacy. Be liberal with the distilled water or alcohol let it flow underneath the chips to wash away what is under them etc… Dry it off with paper towels and let it sit for a day to dry the parts you can’t reach, like under ICs. You can use a hair dryer on no heat or a fan to expedite drying, but still let it sit over night. A guide for removing your motherboard is here. My background is electronics. I am not an Apple guru. Reassemble your laptop give it a try. If this didn’t solve your problem do what mayer is asking you to do.
Removing the Webcam cable which also connects the wireless card fixed the issue for me. I would rather have an external wifi for now and get this going. Thanks for the advise.
I spilled water on my macbook pro today. Had similar issues - fan running at max and constantly from startup, my screen was flicking between dim and normal, one of the channels on my headphone jack was working at lower volume and the computer was running slow. I opened up the bottom, saw that there was some green corrosion on the motherboard, scrubbed that off with an old toothbrush and now it all seems to be back to normal.
Try Fan Control!
Sorry to interrupt the post a little bit. Actually Mac OS X is good at of taking care of itself, if there are performance issues, there are a couple of things you can check: Check your Login Items under System Preferences > Accounts to see what you have automatically launching.Also check /Library/LaunchAgents/ and /Users/yourusername/Library/LaunchAgents/ for items launching at startup Launch Activity Monitor and change “My Processes” at the top to “All Processes”. Then see what may be consuming your OS X system resources. Check the System Memory tab at the bottom of Activity Monitor to see if you have excessive “page outs”, a sign that you may benefit from more RAM. Check if you are running any poor Mac anti-virus programs as they may take large resouces. If you don’t want to do these manually or the above check still won’t help, let this Mac tuneup utility to perform a health check of your Mac and fix relevant issues easily. Hope this help, best regards.
I had the same issue and tried all the above. my kernel_task would sometimes go up to 3000 (how?? i don’t know)
- ran hardware test: Error code 4SNS/1/C0000008:TN1D–124 Managed to resolve it by changing the trackpad cable. looks like the tea spilled dried on the ribbon making it go haywire. simple solution really but Apple asked me to 400 pounds to fix it…what a sham.
