Why do battery resets fix the XPS 9570 CPU failure error?

Question

Hello -  I have a 5 year old Dell XPS 9570 4k screen. In the last year I put a new battery in it (from official DELL store, not a cheap knock off), upgraded RAM and upgraded it to 1tb SSD. Has been working fine all year and better than before (previously had frequent SSD issues). In the last week I spilt a bit of coffee on laptop, don't think any of it did actually seep through, but I turned it off and took it to a shop just to be sure. They opened it up and cleaned it, didn't look to have any liquid on the interior. Turned it back on and it was all good and worked fine for a day. Day later and it wouldn't turn on - got CPU failure (2 amber 1 white). Thought the end had arrived, however on reading these forums I followed the strategy of opening it up > removing physical battery & RAM > power button 30 sec etc. Put it back together and it worked! it turned on! And i used it fine for the next two days. This morning, it wouldn't turn on and gave me the same CPU failure error lights. This time all I did was hold the power button down for 30 seconds. Turned it on again and it worked!? So it keeps on suggesting to me a CPU problem but yet I keep being able to fix the issue/ use the laptop with battery resets. WHAT DOES THIS ACTUALLY MEAN? Will the CPU eventually die? Or is it overall more a battery/CMOS battery issue? I'd like to prevent this error happening to would please appreciate a bit of knowledge to what this all actually means about my laptop health and what I can do to make it 100% again Thanks

ejn63 · Answer

The CPU is probably fine, but there is likely damage (corrosion) on the board due to the spill.  The only sure fix is to replace the system board (which includes the CPU).

Hysamrashed · Answer

I have the same issue with out any water

XPS

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