yesterday i had the dumb idea to smear hand sanitizer gel on my laptop touchpad and keyboard. that went well. :rolleyes: after pulling the keyboard off and blowing on it, i have most of the functions back. but neither shift key works.
is there some special reason the shift keys are still ornery?
i had to paste in the question marks. i’m gonna miss ampersands and bangs.
i got the ctrl keys working again. alt keys seem fine now. shift–i’ve blown in them with my own mouth, with compressed air…i just don’t know.
it’s a compaq presario cq57-200 type laptop, if anyone understands that. cq57-229, i think.
If all else fails, you can get a replacement keyboard from HP here. Since you’ve already removed the keyboard to blow it out, you’ve done the hardest part of the replacement. As to why both Shift keys still don’t work when everything else does, I have no idea. I’m not aware of any way that they differ from other similar keys, like Alt and Ctrl.
Hand sanitizers have both water and glycerin in addition to the ethyl alcohol component. These are easily absorbed into the skin which is why hand sanitizers ‘disappear’ when rubbed on the hands. They do not absorb into plastic parts. Water will readily seep into all the nooks and crannies of the PCB board and can take some time (days to weeks) to evaporate out if it’s between plastic sheet layers.
Get a hair dryer and give the area a general going over on low heat. Do not get over ethusastic with the hair dryer or you can warp the keys. Putting it in front of a fan on high speed for a day or two will also dry it out.
This may not be relevant, but since it happened with PCB (printed circuit board) with a fairly small number of components, it might be.
I have an outdoor sensor for an electronic thermometer. For some reason, I had this crazy idea that “outdoor” meant weather proof. Apparently not. Admittedly, the sensor is designed to be mounted on the side of your house, so I probably should have considered that fact. And normally I would have it hanging from something. But for various reasons, I put it on the steps of my back porch. I guess a combination of rain and condensation made the plastic shell virtually fill with water. I got a small puddle when I went to remove the batteries.
So I dried it out and then left it to air dry for several days. I figured it should be all good by that point, popped in some batteries and set it down right next to the receiver. Nothing. At this point I’m thinking, well, it’s probably dead anyway, may as well tear it apart just for yuks.
Once I mutilated the case and got it open, I pulled out the small PCB and noticed that there was a lot of corrosion, but none of the components looked fried. So I got out my Dremel and loaded a bit with soft bristles. I went over the corroded areas a couple times and everything seemed ok. So I gave the batteries another try and viola, it worked.
I mention this so that if you get to the point where you’re certain the keyboard is dry, and getting down to its PCB is an option, it’s something you might want to keep in mind. Best of luck to you.
you can just live without the shift key and pritend your a 20 year old community college student. about a forth of all college students i know do not even capitulize the personal pronoun i even on graded coarsework