[naphtali]

Hello everyone

A couple of days ago, the piping of my airconditioning unit got clogged and the thing just started dripping water (hopefully clean water )

My 17" PowerBook was right below it, and some water got onto the speaker grill and screen. I didn't think it was a huge deal till I saw a white, dotted and single-pixel line running horizontally flashing repeatedly across the top of the screen.

It seems to happen whenever there is a fast screen redraw happening, like just after logging in when the menubar is first drawn, or when I'm testing screensavers. For screensavers, I've tried Fireflies and Forest. The line stays on in the former, but seems to fade away in the latter.

It doesn't really bother me now as it seems to blend into the menubar (or maybe the bar just doesn't change much). But I'm worried it will develop into something big.

What should I do? Would it just go off with drying? Has anyone experienced this before? Thank you for the kind attention! Sorry for the lengthy post!

[bighead]

Clean or dirty water, either the logic board or the LCD is what is causing the failure. Usually, logic boards cause video problems to manifest themselves around the screen (but not always.) Single line issues are more often an issue with the LCD itself. There may be other components damaged, too, though. Call up your insurance company and see how much they'll pay for a repair...

A tier 4 repair on a 17" PowerBook isn't cheap...

[markponcelet]

Originally posted by naphtali:
What should I do? Would it just go off with drying? Has anyone experienced this before? Thank you for the kind attention! Sorry for the lengthy post!

FWIW, I poured an entire bottle of Mountain Dew into my clamshell ibook once. That causes all sorts of troubles. Long story short, I used rubbing alcohol to clean it, which has a lot of water in it. I had similar problems as you did.

Good news is this: that water will evaporate. So if you haven't permanently damaged anything (and I'd bet that you have not), then you're going to be fine. It'll just take several days. Just give it time. And pray.

It's still possible that you've damaged something, but I think that's less likely than a temporary problem resulting from the presence of water.

Mark