Chosen Solution
On Sunday I spilled beer on my MacBook keyboard. I quickly turned it off, cleaned up the keyboard, and opened the bottom case to clean it up. I disconnected power and battery and used a dry cloth and some alcohol to dry up any beer I could find. The only place I found beer was around the sub-woofer, so I focused there. I let the machine dry for a few days and Tuesday tried to power it up. It begins to boot up, I get the chime and the apple and the spinning pinwheel thing for about 8 seconds, and then it goes black. I took it to an Apple store and they want $755 to refurbish the thing. Before I fork over the $$ I would like to try whatever you experts think might help diagnose whether my board is fried or what the main issue might be. The machine charges, and I have plugged the HD into an adapter and am able to access the data, etc. It seems to be functional. What’s next?
When you say you took off the bottom and cleaned up beer, does that mean there was beer on the inside of the laptop that had drained down through your keyboard? If so, then (obviously, sorry) it covered a lot of critical components. I’d check the logic board and everything else quite thoroughly to make sure there’s no corrosion or anything obviously ruined. On another note, if it lasts for eight seconds I personally would check the heatsinks secondly. The beer might have affected the thermal compound, so I’d take the heatsink off, clean off the processor and heatsink, and reapply some Arctic Silver. You can find the guide here: MacBook Pro 13" Unibody Mid 2010 Heat Sink Replacement
