Laptop troubles

Did I mention that I spilled coke all over my laptop? I don't think I did.

Wait, did I even mention that I HAD a new laptop? No? Maybe? I can't remember, and I'm too lazy to go back and check. Well, anyway, Mum and Dad got me a new laptop for my birthday, I finally opened it on the 20th of January, and then I promptly spilled coke all over it the night before Australia Day and quite simply, it's fucked.

So I thought I'd make a post, and then use that post to explain exactly how fucked the laptop is/was. It worked fine just after the spill, and I'd cleaned up all the stuff off the keyboard. Being the idiot that I am, I didn't turn it straight off and leave it upside down and hope none of the coke got into the circuitry. As a result, well... Coke got into the circuitry. And promptly dried there. Also, it turns out coke is acidic, so there's a very good chance it has also partially corroded away part of the circuit board, meaning that it will need to be completely replaced. Anyway, the next day I wanted to use it, so I turned it on again, because we've already established that I'm not the most responsible and/or intelligent laptop owner, and now here's a list of everything that I could immediately see was wrong with it:

- The power button is jammed, or sticky, or so,etching. Either way, you need to press it several times before it turns on.
- The caps lock key is broken. It just doesn't do anything. But that's okay, because you can do the same thing by tapping the left and the down key at the same time, or the left and the right key, and the down and the tab key, or the tab and the function key or probably a bunch of other key combinations that I didn't waste my time trying to figure out.
- The return key doesn't work. Instead of doubling as the enter key and thus accepting my password at the login screen, it instead puts some kind of character into the password box. Unfortunately, I can't tell which character it is exactly because:
- The shift key seems to be permanently held down. Even if the actual key isn't pressed, it still acts as though it is, meaning I can't get past the login screen because every letter I put in is on capitals.

And that's about all I could see, given that I couldn't get past the login screen, still, those are all keyboard based issues, and there didn't seem to be anything wrong with the actual performance of the machine. So nothing major, right? Well, we'll see...

After that, I turned it off, decided to clean the keyboard, and that was when I realised that the problem was actually underneath the keyboard layer so I couldn't do anything without tearing the laptop apart. Because there was barely any coke underneath any of the keys, and the keys are sort of protected by the backlight of them, so I couldn't take that out. The coke must have gone down and around the edges of the machine.

So I then flipped it over, and decided that I'd have to take the laptop apart, bit by bit, and clean each individual part inside. Unfortunately, it turns out that none of the screwdrivers we have here at home are good enough to undo the screws that keep the bottom of the laptop in place. My plans thwarted, I then left the laptop upside down and hoped for the best.

But the story doesn't end there. You see, it occurred to me that I could get it fixed professionally, so I went to the one and only authorised Mac Service Providers in town. This was on Wednesday. So, about five days after the coke was spilled in the first place. At the store, I learned a couple of things:

1. The store technician was out of town so any repairs couldn't be done for two weeks.
2. Spill damages voids the warranty on the mac.
3. Due to the acidic nature of the liquid spilled, repairs would cost more than a new computer.
4. This basically meant my only option was, if we had home insurance, we could MAYBE claim it under accidental damages. They offered a quote, but I couldn't afford it at that moment, so I declined.

So, now that professional repairs were more or less out of the question, I went back to the home repair route. I went out and purchased a new set of screwdrivers, and then came home and got to work on the computer. I carefully took out each part and, using cotton swabs and a (carefully placed) cup of water, I painstakingly went over each part and cleaned any suspicious stains. I immediately encountered a problem. The battery was screwed in by two screws which were totally different than any of the other screws in the machine. In fact, I needed a totally different, specialised screwdriver for it, which I just didn't have. It was possible to open it using a flathead screwdriver (and in fact I did manage to remove one of he screws like that) but I had worn down the other screw so much that I couldn't do it. And without removing the battery, I couldn't access the top board of the laptop, where most of the spillage occurred. As such, I was left no recourse but to put every piece back where I'd found it. I lost a screw somewhere in the process, but I'm 99% sure it's not a majorly important screw. So, each piece back in it's rightful place, I flipped it over again, pressed the power button and...

Nothing. I pressed it a few more times to be sure.

Still nothing. I pressed it about fifty times, again, just to be sure.

Absolutely nothing happened.

Well, shit. Maybe the batteries just ran out. That's feasible. I haven't actually tested that idea yet, though.

Anyway, that brings us to more or less the present. It turns out that we don't have accidental damages cover, but we lodged a claim for special consideration. So I need to go back to the store and get a quote on repairing the laptop. And I'm pretty sure the quote was fairly expensive. In the meantime, we're also going to see about getting that specialised screwdriver so I can take the battery out. And tomorrow I'm going to ignore all of my problems and go and watch Django Unchained.

The other day, when I said my life was just one huge clusterfuck after another? This was exactly the sort of thing I was talking about.