BestFixing blog — device repair in Barcelona

Gaming laptop shuts down under load: heat, current or logic board

BestFixing workshop team — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The machine runs perfectly for half an hour. Then, in the middle of a match or an export, it cuts out cold: no warning, no blue screen, as though somebody pulled the cable. A while later it boots again quite happily.

That symptom is one of the most common on high-end laptops — MSI, Legion, ROG, Victus, Omen, Alienware, Predator — and it has three very different possible causes. It is worth separating them before spending a euro, because the fix for one does nothing for the other two.

An abrupt shutdown is a protection, not a fault

First of all, to take the drama out of it and put some precision in.

When a computer shuts down cold without closing anything, a safety mechanism has almost always acted. The processor has an absolute thermal limit and, on reaching it, cuts the power rather than carrying on. The power circuit has the same: if a voltage sags below a threshold, everything switches off instead of running badly.

So the shutdown is telling you something has gone out of range. The useful question is not “why does it shut down” but what went out of range. And there are only three answers.

First cause: the heat is not getting out

This is the most common one and the most rewarding, because it nearly always has a fix.

A gaming laptop packs the power draw of a desktop into three centimetres of thickness. The whole system depends on heat travelling from the chips out to some tiny radiators, and that journey degrades in three ways at once:

Dust packed into the radiator. Not a layer of dirt: a felt blanket bonded to the fins, made of hair, ash and dust. The fan keeps spinning exactly as before and the air no longer gets through.
Spent thermal paste. Between the chip and the heatsink sits a very thin layer of paste. Heating and cooling cycles gradually push it out towards the sides — the pump-out effect — and where there was paste there ends up being air, which is the opposite of what was needed. There is no fixed lifespan: it depends on the machine, the compound and your use.
Hardened thermal pads. The graphics memory and the power transistors do not touch the heatsink: they reach it through silicone pads that dry out and crack over the years.

The sign that confirms this cause is a progressive climb before the cut: the fans spool up, performance drops, the chassis gets hot and then it shuts down. If you have a temperature monitor, you will watch the curve rise. If the cut is instant and the machine is lukewarm, this is not your cause.

Second cause: the power supply cannot hold the peak

This is the one almost nobody looks at, and on laptops more than three or four years old it is very common.

Modern gaming laptops run on hybrid power. When the CPU and the graphics chip together ask for more than the charger delivers, the machine makes up the difference by pulling from the battery, even while plugged in. That is not a fault: the manufacturers themselves document it as intended behaviour, and it is what allows more manageable chargers without giving up performance.

The problem shows up as that battery ages. An old cell loses capacity, but above all it loses the ability to deliver current in a burst. And then this happens: the machine holds up perfectly on the desktop and shuts down the instant the first serious peak arrives. With the battery at 100 %, plugged in, and with no temperature rise at all.

The same thing happens by another route if the charger isn’t the right one. A brick with less power than the original fits and charges, but it won’t hold the peak. And an original charger that’s already old can have lost part of what it used to deliver, with nothing on the outside to give it away.

Three things that point at this cause:

It shuts down with the machine lukewarm, with no preceding temperature climb.
It shuts down sooner with an old or swollen battery, or only shuts down when it is not plugged in.
The shutdown is instant, with no stutter or drop in performance first.

If on top of that you notice the machine only runs with the charger attached, or that it has stopped charging altogether, the starting point is a different one and it is at a laptop showing no signs of life.

Third cause: the logic board

When the cooling is fine and the external power is fine too, what is left is the circuit that distributes current inside the machine.

The CPU and the graphics chip are not fed directly from the charger’s 19 volts: there are conversion stages on the board — transistors, coils, capacitors and a controller — that step that voltage down and hold it steady while the draw changes a thousand times a second. Those stages run hot and are among the first things to age in a laptop that has gamed hard.

When one of them starts to fail the symptom is exactly the same: the machine holds the desktop, asks for a current peak and the voltage sags just enough for the protection to trip. It also appears through corrosion, a fatigued joint under a chip or a coil that has lost contact.

None of that needs a whole replacement board if it can be avoided: the component is located and that point is rebuilt. It is what the microsoldering lab is for, and on a PC laptop it is more comfortable work than on a Mac, because there is more space between components and schematics circulate with less secrecy.

Liquid metal, which not everyone knows they have

An important note before anybody opens your laptop.

Part of the recent gaming range — ASUS documents this openly on its own support site — does not use thermal paste on the processor but liquid metal: an alloy with far higher thermal conductivity. It is held in place by a barrier that stops it escaping.

What you need to know is that the compound conducts electricity. The manufacturer warns about it without hedging: if a droplet reaches components on the board, it can cause a short circuit. It also attacks aluminium, so not just any heatsink or any procedure will do.

Translated: a strip-down done without knowing that machine uses liquid metal, or a paste change made with the best intentions and the wrong material, turns routine maintenance into a board fault. That is not a reason to leave it unopened; it is a reason for whoever opens it to know beforehand what they are going to find.

What not to do

Do not keep gaming “until it shuts down”. Every cold cut is a loss of power with nothing closed cleanly, and that is where corrupt file systems come from. Sustained heat does the solder joints no favours either.
Do not block the fans trying to cool it. Cooling pads with a misaligned grille hurt the airflow more than they help.
Do not blow compressed air at the fan with the heatsink still fitted. You pack the dust inwards, which is where it is worst, and you spin the fan far above its rated speed, which takes the bearing with it.
Do not add “a bit of paste” without removing the old. And do not put liquid metal in a machine that never had it, or ordinary paste in one that did.
Do not swap the charger for a generic higher-wattage one assuming it will hold up. The voltage and the connector have to be the manufacturer’s.
Do not strip the machine “to look at the dust” if you are not changing the paste. Lifting the heatsink ruins the layer that was left.
Do not assume it is the graphics chip. It is the first thing said on forums and the last thing it usually turns out to be.

How one cause is separated from another without guessing

The order we follow, in case you want to know what will happen to the machine.

First the shutdown is reproduced with the machine instrumented: CPU and graphics temperatures, real draw at the input, and battery behaviour as the load climbs. That alone separates the thermal scenario from the electrical one without opening anything, because a temperature curve rising until the cut and a voltage sagging on a cold machine look nothing alike.

If it is thermal, the whole cooling system comes off, the radiators are cleaned, the compound appropriate to that specific model is renewed and the pads are replaced. If it is electrical, the machine goes to the board bench: the sagging power stage is measured and the component located. And if what no longer measures up is the charger or the battery, we say exactly that, because it is the simplest of the three repairs and it would be absurd to charge you for a larger one.

We tell you what it has and what it costs before you authorise anything, and what we do carries a 12-month warranty on parts and labour. How we handle a Windows laptop or an Android phone is covered separately, the rest of the workshop guides come off the same bench, the full route is on how the process works, and if you would rather start by telling us exactly when it shuts down, write to us.

My hard drive is clicking: what is happening inside and what to do

BestFixing workshop team — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

If you are reading this with the drive plugged in and clicking away, stop. Unplug it. Read afterwards. This is not drama: on a clicking drive, time spent powered up is measured in accumulated damage.

What that click actually is

Inside a mechanical hard drive there are one or more platters spinning at thousands of revolutions per minute and an arm carrying the read heads, which do not touch the surface: they fly on a cushion of air at a distance measured in nanometres. It is an absurdly small gap; a human hair is thousands of times thicker.

Written in among the data are reference marks that tell the head where it is at every instant. When the head is damaged, misaligned, or the surface beneath it is no longer readable, those references do not appear. And the drive does the only thing it knows how to do: it pulls the arm back to its mechanical stop, recalibrates and tries again.

That knock of the arm against its stop, repeated every second or two, is the click you can hear. People call it the click of death and the name is well earned, because it does not describe a read error: it describes a mechanical failure. There is no software on earth that repairs a bent part.

The first rule: power it down and do not plug it back in

Everything that matters in this article is here.

A head that has been touched or is sitting wrong no longer flies as it should. Every time you power the drive up, that head comes down onto a platter spinning at full speed and scratches the surface. The microscopic debris it lifts stays inside the casing, spreads and scratches more. A drive that today could return almost everything you have on it may, after an afternoon of attempts, return nothing.

Which is why the sentence we repeat most is the hardest one to accept: stop trying. Every spin-up, every “let me have one more go in case it works this time”, every hour connected, is material lost for good.

The single exception that deserves one attempt: if the drive is external, USB powered, and the clicking started right after you changed cable, port or hub, it may simply be a lack of current to start the motor. Try it once with a known good cable and a decent power supply. If it still clicks, that is that: unplug it and do not insist.

Why recovery software is the worst tool here

The programs advertised the moment you search for “hard drive recovery” are not a scam. The problem is that they are built for something else.

That software does exactly the opposite of what a physically damaged drive needs: it keeps the unit spinning for hours and forces retries over and over on the failing sectors, which are precisely where the head is suffering. It is a marathon prescribed to a patient with a broken leg.

And yet it does work, very well, in the other scenario:

The drive sounds normal and spins without odd noises. You deleted a folder, formatted the wrong thing, the partition table broke, the system asks you to initialise the volume.
There the damage is logical: the data is still written and what has failed is the index that finds it.

The practical difference is simple. If it sounds wrong, touch nothing. If it sounds normal, there is room to work — although even then it is better to work on a copy rather than the original, especially when what is inside is irreplaceable.

The myths still doing the rounds

The freezer. It comes from drives of the eighties and nineties with very specific expansion problems. Applied to a modern drive, all you achieve is water condensing inside a mechanism with nanometre tolerances, thickened bearing oil and a free thermal shock. It does not help here.

The sharp knock. “Give it a tap so it unsticks.” What you have is a head that is no longer where it should be; adding an impact does not reseat it, it slams it into the platter.

Turning it upside down or standing it vertically. It can change how it sounds for a few seconds. It changes nothing underneath, and those seconds are more scratching.

Opening it at home for a look. The air in an ordinary room is full of particles far larger than the head’s flying height. Opening it on the living room table closes the door on serious recovery.

A click is not the only noise: learn to tell them apart

Not every sound means the same thing, and the initial diagnosis changes completely:

A rhythmic, repeating click, every second or two, with the drive spinning. The head is retrying. Mechanical damage. Power it down.
A low hum with the drive never spinning up, sometimes with a knock as it starts. Usually a seized motor or a spindle locked after a fall.
A high-pitched whine on connection. The classic sign of a spindle that cannot get going.
Complete silence, no vibration and no warmth. Often the external electronics or the power supply, and oddly enough it is one of the better scenarios: the platters are intact.
It spins normally and sounds fine, but the system does not detect it or asks to format it. This is where the damage may be logical and where the comfortable options live. Do not accept the format.

None of this applies to SSDs and USB sticks, because there are no moving parts. An SSD does not click: if your drive makes noise, it is mechanical.

What a job like this really demands

So you know what you are buying when somebody quotes you for a clicking drive. A mechanical case is not solved with a program: at the very least it demands

opening the unit in a clean, controlled environment, because a single dust particle between head and platter ruins the work;
replacing the head stack with one from a compatible donor drive — the same model is not enough: revision, firmware and often even the production batch matter;
specific tooling to remove and fit the heads without letting them touch the surface;
and then cloning sector by sector with hardware that tolerates errors, reading in passes and leaving the problem areas until last.

Note the order: a full image is made first, and all the work that follows happens on that image, never on the drive. The original usually gives you one good chance and it is not spent browsing folders.

The grown-up conversation: when it is worth it

Mechanical work takes hours, materials and a donor drive. So the right question is not “how much does hard drive recovery cost” but how much is what is inside worth.

It is worth it when it is the only copy: fifteen years of photos, the accounts, a client’s project, a thesis. It is not worth it when it is a backup drive whose original is still alive, or when what is inside is a film library you can download again. And there is a third answer that is equally valid: the data matters, but not that much. Saying so out loud is perfectly fine.

What we do is the first thing of all: assess the drive, tell you what we can see, what we expect to recover and what it costs before you authorise anything. If we do not think it is viable, we say so and give the drive back. The full approach is on data recovery in Barcelona, the step-by-step route is on how the process works and, if you would rather talk it through before travelling, on contact.

One note, because an external drive is not the only case: if what is failing is the internal storage of a recent Mac, the problem is a different and far less intuitive one, because that memory is soldered and encrypted against the processor and the board has to be repaired just enough to read it; the starting point, if the machine will not even boot, is the checks for a Mac that will not turn on.

And for next time: the 3-2-1 rule without the lecture

We are not going to tell you that you should have made backups. We are going to tell you the minimum version that works for an ordinary person:

3 copies of anything you would hate to lose (the original counts as one).
2 different media: the computer and an external drive, for instance.
1 of them away from home. A cloud service counts, and so does a drive at your sister’s house that you update every few months.

In practice, for most people that means Time Machine to an external drive plus iCloud or whichever cloud service you already use. Ten minutes of setup, once. The only important part is checking every so often that the backup is genuinely running: the backup nobody has looked at in two years is the one that fails on the day it is needed.

And if it’s already too late: power it down, stop plugging it in and bring it over. With a mechanical drive, whatever has not been damaged yet is still recoverable.

Windows laptop won’t turn on: where the power stops inside

BestFixing workshop team — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A laptop that gives no sign of life is not a laptop that is vaguely broken inside. It is a sequence that has stopped at one exact point, and finding that point is half the job. The other half is not having made it worse before it arrives.

This guide is about Windows laptops — Lenovo, HP, Asus, Dell, Acer, MSI and company — which are most of what comes through this door. If yours is a Mac, the route is similar but the details change, and they are at the checks for a Mac that will not turn on.

“It won’t turn on” is four different faults

Before anything else, sharpen the symptom. Each answer leads somewhere different, and it is the single detail that shortens the diagnosis most:

Nothing whatsoever. No fan, no LED, no warmth, not the faintest click. The fault is in the power circuit, before the machine ever gets to boot.
There are signs but the screen stays black. Fan spinning, keyboard lighting up, drive light. That is not a power-up problem, it is an image problem.
It starts and shuts down after a few seconds, or loops. The sequence begins, something does not add up and the machine cuts out on protection.
It only runs with the charger plugged in and dies when you unplug it.

Note down which one is yours. If the machine always shuts down after a while gaming or rendering, rather than when you press the button, you are not in this article: you are in a gaming laptop that shuts down under load.

What happens inside when you press the button

It helps to understand this, because it explains how a machine can be completely mute and still have a small fault.

The moment you plug the charger in — before you touch anything — an input circuit accepts that voltage and generates two permanent rails, 3.3 and 5 volts, which are alive even with the laptop switched off. Those two rails feed the embedded controller, a small microcontroller that acts as the doorman of the board. It is the only thing awake.

The power button feeds nothing. It only sends that doorman a signal. The doorman checks the conditions are right and then brings up the remaining voltages in a strict order: some first, others after, and only when every one of them answers does it release the processor to boot.

If a single one of those voltages is missing, arrives late or is shorted to ground, the sequence stops at that step and the machine stays exactly as it was: mute, cold and undramatic. Which is why an inert laptop does not mean a wrecked laptop. Very often it is a one-millimetre component on one particular rail.

What you can rule out yourself without opening anything

This is the dull part and the one that turns out to be right most often. “I already tried another charger” does not count if that other charger is not a known good one.

Try a charger of the same type and the same wattage. A 120 W laptop on a 65 W charger may never get as far as booting. If you can, swap the cable and the brick separately so you know which one was failing.
Plug it into the wall, not into a questionable extension lead or a monitor with ports.
Look at the LED on the charger and on the machine. No light, steady light, blinking light: three different clues, all three worth having.
Leave it charging for a good while before trying to switch it on. A completely flat battery does not react instantly.
Do a full power-down. Unplug the charger, remove the battery if it is removable and hold the power button for about thirty seconds. That drains the capacitors and resets the embedded controller. Some laptops also have a small reset hole in the base that does the same job with a paperclip.
Shine a torch across the screen at an angle in a dark room. If you can make out the desktop or the logo, the machine is booting and what is failing is the image.
Plug in an external monitor. If there is a signal there, the problem is the screen, its cable, or the hinge that cable runs through.

That last point isn’t theoretical: on a laptop with a plastic lid, the video cable ends up breaking in the same place everything else breaks, the hinge. If the lid has started to creak when you open it, if it has gone stiff, or if the plastic at the corner has cracked, get it looked at before the cable pays for it.

What turns up inside when none of that works

At this point it is the board, and it is worth knowing what gets looked for, because it shapes the conversation you will have at the counter.

A short on a supply rail. A cracked ceramic capacitor, a switching transistor shorted. The rail that should read 1 volt reads zero and drags the rest down with it. It is the silent fault par excellence.
The input circuit. The transistor that lets the charger’s voltage through to the board is the first thing to take a spike and the first thing to be measured.
The charging controller. If the chip that negotiates charging is dead, the machine never sees the charger and never gets as far as trying.
Corrosion. A glass of water months ago that nobody mentioned. It does not break things: it eats tracks and pins slowly until one day a circuit opens.
The embedded controller or its memory. The doorman is there but does not answer, or has lost its firmware.

None of this is diagnosed by swapping parts and hoping. It is measured: cold current draw on a bench supply, a thermal camera to see which component heats up when it should not, and the failing rail followed to the exact point. That is the work we do in microsoldering and logic board repair.

What not to do

Do not keep pressing the power button over and over. If a rail is shorted, every attempt feeds current into the same place and can spread the damage into healthy areas.
Do not try another laptop’s charger “to see if it works”. The connector fits far more machines than the voltage allows.
Do not open it without disconnecting the battery first. A screwdriver and a powered board is the fastest way to turn a small fault into an irreversible one.
Do not leave it “being tried” in three different places. Every attempt changes the starting point, and the story has to be reconstructed before anyone touches anything.
Do not put it in rice and do not switch it on if liquid was involved, even weeks ago. The order matters and it is set out in what spilled liquid does to a laptop.
Do not buy a replacement board online before knowing what has failed. It is the most expensive part in the machine and, in many cases, the one that was least needed.

Why it matters who looks at the machine here

This is the ground where one workshop separates from another most clearly, and it is worth saying plainly.

A service that works by modules has only one possible answer for a machine that will not turn on: replace the whole board. That is a legitimate answer and sometimes it is the right one. The problem is that on a laptop the board is usually the most expensive part inside, and on a machine a few years old the quote gets uncomfortably close to what the thing is worth second hand.

Working at component level changes the question. It is not “how much is a new board?” but “which specific point on this board stopped working, and can it be rebuilt?”. On a PC laptop that conversation is more comfortable than on a Mac: there is more space between components, schematics circulate with less secrecy and component-level spares are easy to source. How that fits with what we do every day is on PC and Android repair.

When the numbers don’t add up, we’ll tell you with the figures in front of you. We won’t say yes to a repair that costs nearly as much as the machine just because we can do it, and what moves the price of each fault is explained separately.

And if the urgent thing is not the laptop but what is inside it

Say so the moment you walk in, ahead of anything else. It changes the order of the entire job: the goal stops being a perfect machine and becomes reading the drive.

The good news is that on most Windows laptops the storage sits on a separate M.2 module, so it comes out and gets read without depending on the board coming back to life. That turns into a formality what on a recent Mac is a compulsory board repair, because there the SSD is soldered and encrypted against the processor. The way we work is on data recovery, and if what you have is an external drive that has started making noise, stop before you go any further and read a hard drive that clicks.

One detail worth keeping in mind: if the drive has BitLocker enabled — increasingly common on Windows 11 laptops — you will need the recovery key from your Microsoft account to open it outside the machine. Find it before you set off.

We look at the laptop, measure it and tell you what it has and what it costs before you authorise anything; what we do carries a 12-month warranty on parts and labour. The process end to end is on how the process works, and if you would rather start by telling us exactly what happens when you press the button, write to us.

My Mac won’t turn on: what to check before bringing it in

BestFixing workshop team — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

First things first: if the Mac has been in liquid, stop here. Do not switch it on, do not charge it and do not try anything below. First aid for a laptop with liquid on it is at what to do with a MacBook that has had liquid spilled on it, and the order matters a great deal.

For everything else, one thing at a time. “It won’t turn on” is a symptom, not a diagnosis.

First, sharpen the symptom: these are five different faults

Watch what the machine does exactly when you press the button. Each answer leads somewhere different:

Nothing at all. No noise, no warmth, no light. The fault is in the power circuit.
There are signs of life but the screen stays black. That is not a power-up problem, it is an image problem.
It starts and shuts down in a loop, or dies after a few seconds.
It only runs with the charger plugged in and dies the moment you unplug it.
It powers up but stops on a screen (question mark, frozen logo, prohibited sign). That is no longer start-up hardware, it is the system or the drive.

Note down which one is yours. It is the single piece of information that shortens the diagnosis most.

What happens inside when you press the button

Understanding the sequence helps, because it explains why some symptoms are mild and others are not.

The charger delivers voltage to the board. An input circuit accepts it and generates the first permanent power rails, the ones that are alive even with the machine switched off. The power button feeds nothing: it only signals the power manager, which then brings up the remaining voltages in a strict order and, if every one of them is correct, releases the processor to boot.

If a single one of those voltages is missing or shorted, the sequence stops there and the machine stays exactly as it was: dead, quiet and undramatic. Which is why a completely inert Mac does not mean a wrecked Mac. Very often it is a one-millimetre component on one particular rail.

Is it dead, or is it just not showing an image?

With the Mac closed and quiet, press the power button and look for this:

Can you hear the fan, a click, the drive, anything at all?
Does the machine feel warm around the keyboard after a minute?
Does the keyboard backlight come on, or the caps lock light?
In a dark room, shine a torch across the screen at an angle. If you can make out the desktop or the cursor, the image is there and what is missing is the backlight.
Plug in an external monitor. If the image appears there, the machine boots perfectly and the problem is the screen or its cable.

If there are signs of life and no image, do not carry on with this guide: the path is a different one and it starts by ruling out the display cable and the backlight, not the power circuit.

Charger, cable and port: ruling them out properly

This is the dullest part and the one that turns out to be right most often. “I already tried another charger” does not count if that other charger is not a known good one.

Use another charger of the same type and wattage, and if you can, swap cable and adapter separately so you know which one was failing.
Plug it into a wall socket, not a questionable extension lead or a port on another machine.
Leave it connected for a good while before trying to switch it on. A completely flat battery does not react instantly.
With MagSafe, watch the LED: no light, a blinking light and a light that changes colour on its own are three different clues.
Try every USB-C port. One port not charging while another does is common, and it already tells you the problem is that port rather than the whole board.
Look inside the connector with a torch. USB-C ports pack lint into the bottom. With the machine off and a plastic tool (never metal), it comes out.

The full power-down

On Macs with Apple silicon the old SMC and NVRAM resets no longer exist. What does help is this:

Hold the power button for ten seconds, until it shuts down completely.
Disconnect the charger.
Wait thirty seconds.
Reconnect and switch on.

On Intel Macs the SMC reset still makes sense, and it varies by model, as does the NVRAM reset by holding Option + Command + P + R at start-up.

None of this fixes a physical fault, but it does unstick the power manager when it has hung, which happens more often than you’d think.

The swollen battery: the sign people ignore

If the trackpad has stopped clicking, if the lid no longer closes flush or if the machine rocks on the desk, the battery is very probably swollen.

What happens inside: the electrolyte in an aged lithium cell breaks down and produces gas. The cell inflates, pushes the trackpad up from below and the case out from within, and in advanced cases it goes as far as stressing the board or splitting the display cable. On top of that the system disconnects the battery for safety, and from then on the machine only runs plugged in, or does not start at all.

Stop charging it, do not carry it squeezed into a backpack, and get it looked at. It is a routine repair; what gets expensive is waiting until it deforms the case.

What not to do

Pressing the power button over and over. If there is a short on one rail, every attempt feeds current into it and can spread the damage into healthy areas.
Charging it with a swollen battery.
Opening it yourself without disconnecting the battery first. A screwdriver and a powered board is the fastest way to turn a small fault into a large one.
Restoring the machine in DFU mode. In that tool, “revive” preserves your data and “restore” wipes the machine completely. If there is anything inside without a backup, this is the most destructive thing you can do.
Leaving it “being tried” in three different places. Every attempt changes the starting point, and the story has to be reconstructed before anyone touches anything.

When it is none of the above

If you have got this far with nothing to show for it, the fault is usually on the logic board: the charging circuit, the power management chip, an open coil or a short on one of the supply rails. A classic is the USB-C ports, which take voltage spikes and protect the board by destroying themselves.

That is not diagnosed by trying parts: it is measured. The board goes under the microscope, cold current draw is measured, and the failing rail is followed to the specific component. It is what we do in MacBook and iMac repair and in the microsoldering lab. Most repair services, not working at component level, can only offer you a whole replacement board, which usually costs close to what the machine is worth. If what you have on the desk is a Windows laptop, the route is similar but the details differ and they are at a laptop showing no signs of life.

That’s where the awkward conversation turns up: on a Mac that’s a fair few years old, if the board quote gets close to what the machine is worth second-hand, we’ll tell you with the numbers in front of us. We’d rather lose the job than charge you for it knowing it doesn’t add up, and what moves the price of each fault is set out on the prices page.

And if there is work inside with no backup

Say so the moment you walk in, ahead of anything else. On Macs with Apple silicon the storage is soldered and encrypted alongside the processor, so there is no pulling the drive and reading it elsewhere: the only route is repairing that board just enough to boot once. That changes the order of the entire job, and it is set out on data recovery.

We look at the machine, measure it and tell you what it has and what it costs before you authorise anything. The process end to end is on how the process works, the rest of the workshop guides come off the same bench, and if you’d rather start by telling us what exactly happens when you press the button, write to us.

Liquid spilled on your MacBook: what to do in the first minutes

BestFixing workshop team — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

If you are reading this with the laptop dripping in front of you, jump to the first section and come back afterwards. The rest can wait five minutes. The machine cannot.

One note on scope: this is about laptops. If what got wet is a phone, the manual is a different one and it is at your phone got wet, what to do in the first hour. On a MacBook almost everything changes: the keyboard is an open funnel down to the board, the battery covers the entire bottom half and keeps feeding the board even with the machine switched off, and taking one apart is another world.

The first sixty seconds

In this order, without thinking about it:

Move the machine away from the spill and unplug the charger.
Hold the power button for ten seconds, until it shuts down completely. Do not use the system menu: it takes too long and every second counts.
Remove everything plugged in: cables, drives, adapters, cards.
Dry the outside with a lint-free cloth, without rubbing the ports.
Stand it face down in a tent shape: lid open at an angle, keyboard towards the floor, on a towel. Let the liquid leave the way it came in.
Do not close it. Closing it presses the liquid from the keyboard against the screen and spreads it into places that were dry.
Get it looked at the same day if you can.

And the most important item on the list, set apart because it is the one people break:

Do not switch it back on “just to test”. Not in a while, not tomorrow. Every power-up on a damp board is a roll of the dice.

Why a laptop is worse than a phone

A modern phone is sealed with adhesive and gaskets around its whole perimeter. A MacBook has none of that: no model carries a liquid resistance rating. The keyboard is a flat, perforated surface sitting directly above the electronics.

That means three things:

The liquid reaches the logic board in seconds, not minutes.
It lands on a large-surface battery that is always feeding the board, even after you have switched the machine off. That is why a technician’s first move is to disconnect it.
The keyboard is usually the first thing to die, and on the models where it is riveted to the chassis it is one of the most labour-intensive parts to replace.

What not to do

Rice. It does not work. It does not get inside and it does not remove the residue, which is the real damage. It only lets time pass.
Hairdryer, radiator or sunshine. Heat pushes moisture further in, punishes the battery, softens adhesives and speeds corrosion up rather than slowing it down.
Charging it. Not even to test. That is feeding current into a circuit bridged with water.
Shaking it hard. You will spread liquid into clean areas.
A vacuum cleaner or compressed air at pressure. Both push the liquid deeper in.

The real damage is not the water: it is the corrosion

This is the part almost nobody explains, and it is the key to everything else.

Pure water barely conducts. What a coffee, a beer or tap water carries is salts and minerals, and as they dry they stay behind as a film across the board. That film is conductive and corrosive: it creates paths between points that should never touch and, with the battery holding the board at voltage, an electrochemical corrosion process starts eating tracks, pins and the pads under the chips.

Note the important part: that process needs voltage to move quickly, and in a switched off laptop the battery is still supplying it. Which is why the clock does not stop when you shut the machine down. It stops when somebody opens it and disconnects the battery.

Two confusing consequences follow:

A MacBook that has had a spill can carry on working for days or weeks and die later.
A MacBook that will not start after a spill often comes back entirely if it is cleaned quickly.

The variable that rules is not how much liquid went in. It is how many hours pass before it is opened and cleaned.

Not all liquids are the same

Tap water: the least bad case, if you act quickly.
Coffee, tea, soft drinks, beer, wine: worse. The sugars leave a sticky layer that traps dirt and holds moisture indefinitely, so corrosion carries on months later.
Sea water, soapy water or washing-up water: salt corrodes very fast and surfactants creep into places plain water would never get to.

What a workshop that knows the job actually does

It is not “dry it and try it”. It is this:

Strip it down and disconnect the battery as fast as possible. With no voltage, corrosion very nearly stops.
Take the board out and clean it ultrasonically. It is the only thing that genuinely lifts residue from underneath the chips, where no cloth or brush reaches.
Inspect it under a microscope: eaten tracks, lifted pads, components with green crust, attacked connectors.
Repair what is damaged by rebuilding tracks and replacing components, which is microsoldering and logic board work rather than a parts swap.
Test the machine assembled and give you the diagnosis and quote before repairing.

All of it happens in central Barcelona, and MacBook and iMac repair has the detail of what gets checked. The price moves on specific things — which liquid it was, how long it has been, whether the keyboard or battery need replacing as well as cleaning, and whether the corrosion has reached an expensive chip or only a few tracks — so you will not find a fixed figure here: what moves the price of a repair is a separate conversation and the real number comes with the machine open in front of you.

If what you care about is the data

Say so the moment you walk in. Genuinely: make it the first sentence.

On Macs with Apple silicon the SSD is soldered to the logic board, so there is no such thing as pulling the drive and putting it in another machine. Getting the data back means repairing the board just enough to read that memory, and that is a different operation — with a different order of priorities — from leaving the laptop working again. Every attempt to power it up yourself narrows those options. It is set out on data recovery.

The warning sign almost everyone ignores

The MacBook got wet, you dried it, it started, and you have been using it happily for three weeks. Then a key stops responding. Or the trackpad does odd things. Or a USB-C port stops charging. Or it shuts down on its own.

That isn’t bad luck: it’s corrosion that has already eaten something. And by that point the job is bigger, because more areas are affected than if it had been cleaned on day one. It can still be repaired in plenty of cases, but the bill is a different one.

To sum up the only thing worth remembering: switch it off, leave it off, and get it opened soon. The clock decides the rest.

Your phone got wet: what to do (and not do) in the first hour

BestFixing workshop team — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Let us start with the part that matters, because if you only read one paragraph, read this one:

Do not switch it on and do not charge it. Putting current through a damp board is what turns a scare into a serious fault.

This guide is about phones. If the liquid landed on a laptop the procedure changes quite a lot — the keyboard funnels it straight down to the logic board and the battery has to come off fast — and it is set out step by step in what to do with a MacBook that has had liquid spilled on it.

What to do, in order

Get it out of the liquid and switch it off. If it is on, shut it down completely. If it is already off, leave it off and resist the urge to check anything.
Take off the case and, if it has one, the SIM tray. It helps it drain and breathe.
Dry the outside with a lint-free cloth, without rubbing the ports.
Stand it on edge or face down, connectors pointing at the floor, so the liquid leaves the way it came in.
Do not handle it more than you have to while you wait.
Get it looked at as soon as you can. The same day, ideally.

What not to do

Do not switch it on “just to see if it works”. It is the number one cause of irreversible damage.
Do not charge it. Not by cable and not on a wireless pad: wireless charging is still current running through the board.
Do not use a hairdryer or a radiator. Heat damages adhesives, screen and battery, and it pushes moisture further in.
Do not put it in rice. It does not work: it never reaches the sealed inside and it does not stop corrosion.
Do not shake it hard. You will spread the liquid into areas that were dry.
Do not trust the speaker water-ejection trick. Vibrating the membrane clears the speaker cavity and brings the sound back, nothing more. The board is exactly as it was, and the sound coming back gives you a false sense that the problem is solved.

Water does not break things: it corrodes them

The real damage is not the water itself. It is what the water leaves behind, and what happens while there is current.

Two mechanisms run at once. The first is electrochemical: any liquid that is not distilled water conducts, so with the board powered, tiny currents flow between points at different voltages, metal migrates from one track towards another and the track thins until it opens. That is the heart of why switching it on is such a bad idea: with no current, the process very nearly stops.

The second is residue corrosion. Liquids carry salts and minerals that stay behind on the board and underneath the chips once the water evaporates. That residue conducts and it is also hygroscopic: it pulls moisture out of the air, so the phone never truly dries out inside. Months later there is still a damp film doing its work.

Which is why two confusing things happen:

A wet phone can carry on working for days or weeks and then die.
A phone that will not switch on after a soaking often comes back entirely if it is cleaned in time.

The variable that matters most is how many hours pass before it is opened and cleaned.

Not all liquids are the same

Fresh water: the least bad case, if you act fast.
Sea water or pool water: much worse. Salt and chlorine corrode very quickly.
Soft drinks, sugary coffee, beer: the sugars leave a sticky film that traps dirt and moisture indefinitely.
Washing-up or soapy water: surfactants break the surface tension and creep into places plain water would never reach, seals included.

How to tell whether it really got inside

Without opening it you can gather a fair number of clues. None is conclusive on its own, but all of them help:

The liquid contact indicator. On models with a SIM tray you can see it inside the slot with a torch: white or silver means it has not tripped; red means it has. Apple uses it to decide coverage, so it also tells you how that conversation will go.
Stains or halos under the screen glass, or patches of the panel that look lighter. That is liquid inside the laminate and it does not dry out.
The speaker sounds muffled or the microphone sounds distant. Usually water in the grilles, and it often clears on its own, but it tells you where the liquid went in.
Face recognition stops working. The front sensor module is sensitive to moisture and it is one of the first things to go.
Charging becomes unpredictable. The port is the way in and the first area to corrode; if the phone got wet, skip the cable tests and have it opened.

What we do with a device that has been in liquid

We open it and disconnect the battery immediately, so there is no current anywhere on the board.
We strip the board completely and remove the shields, because the residue hides right underneath them.
We clean it ultrasonically, which is the only thing that genuinely lifts deposits from under the chips, and dry it.
We inspect it under a microscope: corrosion, eaten tracks, consumed pins, damaged components.
We repair whatever is affected and test block by block.
We give you the real diagnosis and the quote before any repair starts.

This is microsoldering and logic board work, not a parts swap, which is why it is not done everywhere. The detail of what gets checked is on iPhone repair in Barcelona, and what moves the price of a repair is explained separately, because here it depends on which liquid it was and how many hours have gone by.

If what you care about is the photos

Say so the moment you walk in. On a device that has been in liquid, every attempt to switch it on reduces the chances of rescuing the data, and on an iPhone the memory is soldered and encrypted alongside the processor: it cannot be lifted out and read elsewhere. The approach changes — the board is stabilised just enough to reach the data, and only then do we talk about repairing the phone — and it is set out on data recovery.

When we’ll tell you not to repair it

It doesn’t always work out, and we’d rather say so early. When corrosion has already reached under the processor or the memory, when the phone spent weeks switching itself on and off before it got here, or when the work adds up to nearly what that model is worth, we tell you with the diagnosis in front of us and you decide. We’d rather lose the job than charge you for a repair that doesn’t pay off, which is why that conversation always comes before you authorise anything — where it sits in the job is set out on how the process works.

And about water resistance

Recent phones carry an IP rating, but the small print is worth reading: it is measured in a laboratory, with fresh water, on new devices, under controlled conditions. Age, knocks and any previous opening all cost the seals and adhesives their effectiveness, and the rating does not cover salt water, soap or sugary drinks.

Translated: water resistance is a safety net, not an invitation. The same goes for an iPad or an Apple Watch: aluminium and good sealing hide the moisture, but the corrosion keeps working away inside.