Chosen Solution
Hi! I have a late 2011 MacBook Pro (A1278, MD314LL/A) that doesn’t turn on unless the power cable is plugged in. I’ll give some context: yesterday afternoon, my dad spilled wine on his MacBook. He immediately turned it off and came to me. I went on iFixit and followed the guide to disassemble it. I successfully took the motherboard out, I cleaned whatever it had on it and reassembled it according to the guide. I advised him not to turn it on within a day or two in case I had missed anything Fast forward to today. My dad needed to work on some stuff so he tried to turn it on but it didn’t. I thought it was some cable I didn’t seat properly, so I opened it up again, reseated every cable and closed it. It still didn’t boot. Then, I plugged the power cable and it magically turned on. Everything works; trackpad, keyboard, keyboard backlight, display, speakers, everything. The only weird thing I noted is that it doesn’t go to sleep when I close the lid. Thank you in advance!
You probably caused a spontaneous reboot. This can be done bt disconnecting the mag-safe adapter and also the battery. When the battery is reconnected and the mag-safe attached it will spontaneously reboot. If the liquid entered via the keyboard, the power on button may have shorted out. To repair this you will need to replace the keyboard. While it’s drying out, just put it to sleep when finished rather than shutting it down. Give it a week then shut down and test the power on button. MacBook Pro Unibody (A1278) Keyboard
@zephyr22 - This is still a very good system! With the added information we now know the battery is in trouble! What happens is when it degrades it expands this pressure is pushing the case effecting the keyboard and trackpad
Carefully, remove the boot cover to check yours. If its swelled up all you need is a new battery to get this system running again!
