Sony :: (Completely) Disassembling Vaio

Spilled beer on my comp about a week ago, immediately got a blue warning screen telling me to contact my service provider. So I unplugged it and pulled the battery, drained what liquid I could out of it, and slowly started disassembling right down to the motherboard. I slowly spent the last week gently rubbing the crud off all the circuits with a soft toothbrush and some q-tips, everything appears to be gone. I did not check the CPU, hopefully that's fine. Anyway I put it mostly back together and tried to power it on, and nothing happened.

It is possible that the beer in fact killed it completely. However I would suspect that if that were the case then the unit will still receive power and show signs of life, but not actually boot. Another possibility is that I killed it myself while taking it apart. It is also possible that there is a short, or I forgot to hook everything up correctly, etc etc

From a troubleshooting standpoint I think my next move will be completely taking everything out (motherboard, cpu, everything) and starting from ground zero to make sure everything is clean and connected properly. Ie connecting the motherboard with power and seeing if it powers on, then add the cpu and see if it powers on, then add the memory, etc. I know the system won't boot without a cpu/mem, but it should still respond to the power input. Or at least it should, in theory

Ive done this a thousand times with desktop systems, but never for a laptop. My question: are there any failsafe devices which prevent the system from powering up unless they are connected?