Chosen Solution
Hey all. I recently came into possession of a water damaged macbook. It was my cousins and he gave it to me to either try and fix or sell for parts. How do you guys go about testing the components to see what is salvageable and what is not? I have a macbook pro, would any of the parts be testable in there? Im thinking maybe the memory and hard drive would be easiest. Does this carry any risk if the parts are shorted? id like to narrow things down and if its just a logic board i may repair and sell it or just sell as a fixer needing logic board. Ive disassembled it but this is not a new spill and the unit has been sitting for some time, so I cannot really see anything wrong. Thanks.
Aside from boards completely fried by liquid, I’d say the next most common liquid-damaged component is memory. Definitely pull the memory from the bad machine, and try your MacBook Pro’s known-good memory. Using it for testing shouldn’t hurt it. Try one module in one slot with the other empty, and then move the single module to the other slot if that doesn’t work. This method of testing reveals if a slot is bad. I’ve had at least a dozen MacBooks work fine after just the memory was replaced. And usually, the damaged memory works again too if rubbing alcohol is swabbed over the corroded parts, which are usually sort of a crusty white on the memory module. I’d use q-tips and rubbing alcohol on any part of the MacBook which appears to be corroded. Sure, you can use your Pro’s hard drive for testing, but actually you should probably just pull the MacBook’s drive while you’re testing the machine, because for the most part it’s not necessary that a hard drive be installed at all. If you ever get to the point where it chimes, the screen lights up, and you have a blinking question mark, then you can start to worry about the hard drive, but until then it’s not necessary to have it in there. Definitely try to reset the PMU…sometimes that “brings to life” dead machines. Good luck!
I would think the memory, hard drive dvd drive and display are probably ok. How the macbook was damaged will be a better guide of whats good and whats junk. If it was for instance submerged it may well be nothing is usable. If you have access to a monitor you may attempt to power it up and see if it boots. The hard drive and dvd drive can be tested externally but the memory will require a compatible computer. Good luck. Ralph
Although I agree the drives will probably be okay, there are a bunch of ways to check the HDD, however I suggest the simplest one- taking it out and putting it in an enclosure, then connecting and testing from your MBP. rdklincorporated pretty much has you covered there. Listen to him
while pressing the startup key hold down “d” and when the hardware test window appears, test the hardware to see what works.
