Troubleshooting T400 battery issues from water damage

I recently spilled water onto my 4 month old T400. Dried it out for a couple of days, everything seems to run normal, except the battery light blinks orange, and it won't run on battery (hard shut down the instant I unplug it). While plugged in, the battery status in the system tray indicates 99% charge. My guess is that either the battery is dead, or the hardware component(s) used to charge the battery, or draw power to run from the battery is dead.

I'm not trying to cheat Lenovo out of trying to cover this damage under my warranty which doesn't cover water damage. I'm happy to pay for these repairs myself. But what I'm concerned about is that if I send it in for repairs, they might see there's water damage, make a note of it, and then down the line if there's any genuine warranty-covered repairs, they'll blame it on prior water damage when in fact it's not that. Having it repaired 3rd party locally is an option. But I have a couple of questions:

1) Is there any way to detect water damage on the battery or on the power management unit. For example, on cell phones there's a small indicator that changes color or something if exposed to water to detect water damage -- is there something similar on the 4 cell battery or in the computer itself?

2) In trying to determine if it's the battery itself that's damaged, or additional power management components, I ran a system test from the Thinkvantage Lenovo System Toolbox. Everything, including the "battery life test" passed. Thinkvantags Power Manager says that "A battery error has occured. The battery cannot be charged. Replace battery" and the battery status is "no activity." Under Device Manager, everything seems normal (double clicked and it says "This device is working properly", including the "AC Adatper" and the "ACPI-compliant control method battery." I don't exactly know what the second one is, if it's related to how the laptop runs on battery or charges it. But are either of these tests (System Toolbox, and Device Manager) reliable in troubleshooting malfunctioning devices?

Are there any other tests or programs to run (either included or freeware?) to test the functionality and status of my different hardware components to narrow it down? Any other suggestions on how I can troubleshoot the problem before I get Lenovo Tech support involved? Anything else I should check for?

I'm running Vista. If it's relevant, the water entered from the side, on the left copper colored vent area (it was on the floor, kicked over a cup of water that was carelessly placed on the floor next to it).

 

Borrow a battery from someone, it should answer a lot of questions as to what is broken.

 

1) you need a spare working battery to resolve this.

2) aftermarket repair may void the warranty on your system.

So the cheapest option for you right now is to check the battery first, and then take the next step.