Battery not Recognized, but still running on battery power

Hey guys,

I'm in a very confusing situation right now.

It all started with a little water drop getting into the trackpad edge. The mouse started going all over the place, and the device became almost unusable.

I got the genius idea of opening it up, and trying to clean the trackpad with alcohol, but failed in the attempt of removing the battery.

I tried pouring alcohol into the edges of the battery, attempting to remove the glue, but it turned out to be much harder than expected. Then I noticed that the alcohol was pouring out of the trackpad. So I guessed maybe that already fixed the problem. And it did! Everything worked perfectly.

But when I closed the lid and screwed everything together again. The device didn't boot up anymore.

There are certain conditions under which the device can still boot up. For one, if I remove the battery ribbon cable, hold down the power button for 10 seconds, then plug in the magsafe adapter and hold the power button for another 10 seconds, it boots up. The fans are at maximum power and the device is painfully slow, but it boots up.

If I have the battery plugged in while hoilding the power button, nothing happens (with or without magsafe).

If I instead plug in the battery after holding the power button for the first 10 seconds, plug in the magsafe and keep holding the power button for the remainder it also boots up.

But the funny thing is, that if I remove the magsafe cable atfer it booted up, the device still keeps running, although no battery is recognized. Cocoa Battery only shows NaN for the battery and the normal battery indicator doesnt show up at all.

Do you have any advice? Is it just the battery, and a replacement should fix all the problems, or is it something more serious?

Thank you.