[Hampshire] Acer Laptop A3380 Power Problem

Hi all

I'm having a power problem with the wife's laptop. I'll keep this as short as I can... In chronological order

* Laptop was working fine
* Wife spills liquid in it and it appears to die. We leave it 12 hours
* Laptop comes back to life - no problems
* Then (months later) it refuses to run on the mains and obviously the battery runs out. I conclude whatever's wrong cannot be to do with orange squash spiled inside.
* Try another power supply - no dice.
* Notice the central pin on the laptop's power socket is now in the male end of the charger (ooer!). Apparently this is something of a design fault for these models. A local shop have soldered on a new socket but they said they couldn't make it boot. This is probably because I'd taken the HD out. Having reinstalled it - delighted to see the thing spring back to life.
* However - after 5 mintues, I got the 7% battery life remaining i.e. it's still not working from AC mains despite the socket
being fixed.

I'm loathe to simply scrap this because I've proved it's "working". It's just that it refuses to either charge the battery or work from AC mains. Any ideas anyone? FWIW I've tried plugging it in with the battery completely removed - no dice.

Cheers
Rob