I was looking for ways to clean my keyboard, and saw multiple people just washing it with water, along with the claim that since it was just plastic and solid state electronics, as long as it was perfectly dry before using, washing was a safe way of cleaning it. How far does this logic extend? What electronic devices can be washed, dried and then used again. Is washing a laptop safe? What are the components in a typical laptop that will not take kindly to washing?
If you completely disassembled it first, you could probably wash everything inside except for the monitor, hard drive, and touch pad, as long as you made sure everything was completely dried out before re-assembling…
If you don’t completely disassemble it first, there are all kinds of places where water can get trapped inside of it. Connectors will corrode. Socketed chips and memory sticks will corrode. Connector crud will probably be your biggest problem.
Capillary action is your enemy here: while it’s true that if you got everything perfectly dry again, it most of it would work, it would be almost impossible to get everything dry. There’s too many small areas that will trap water and hold it. Any water that got between the plates in the monitor would likely be permanent (think a wet mount microscope slide as an example). If there were ANY impurities in your water (including the dirt you’re trying to remove), they would be carried around and deposited in unfriendly places: virtually any contamination will destroy a hard drive, and anything that happens to be conductive will destroy much of what’s left.
A slightly damp cloth on the outside is generally OK. A step up from that is damp cloth with rubbing alcohol, but it’s more destructive, and you should test to make sure it doesn’t eat the plastic, and definitely doesn’t get inside.
Of course, if the dirt is internal and significant enough that it needs cleaning beyond what disassembly + vacuum can do, the machine may be a loss anyway–at which point what have you got to lose?
Cray cray, man. If your laptop keyboard is dirty, unscrew it and take it off and wash it separately, not the whole laptop.
It would help a great deal to hold the laptop so the keys are facing downward and work upwards from below. A vacuum cleaner brush attachment removes lots of gunk. Isopropyl alcohol is probably better than water here in every way except for the possibility it would attack label inks and adhesives – for example dropping a cellphone into isopropanol is the best first aid to deal with accidental submersion in water (after pulling the battery if possible). So, a little Q-Tip experimentation to verify that the key labels are safe is probably the only prerequisite to using a washcloth wet with it. Perhaps it’d be wise to keep lots of ventilation in motion so the alcohol vapors don’t mess with the hard drive, or hunt around a little online to find out if alcohol vapor is a known urgent problem with hard drives.
And if you have any sort of warranty left on the thing, it will certainly void it. I don’t know if it’s standard practice or not, but some (many? most?) laptops and other electronic devices have a water damage indicators in them that changes color in contact with water. I would only consider washing the keyboard itself (removed from the laptop itself) and I hope this is what the OP means. I’ve certainly seen website that mention running stand-alone keyboard units through a dishwasher (never tried it myself), but never saw one that recommended actually washing the entire laptop.
There is some risk in removing the keyboard from the computer. You might damage the ribbon cable in the process of removing or reinstalling it. Instead I’d recommend cleaning it, perhaps with a very slightly damp cloth.
To clarify, I was talking about having seen someone washing a PC keyboard, and that raised the question of “Is it safe to wash other electronic devices”. My laptop does get crud stuck in the fan and heat sink(which I clean occasionally by disassembling the entire laptop), and overheats because of that, so I was wondering, as a theoretical exercise, if removing a few parts(say the hard disk, which is far more easily accessible than the fan/heat sink assembly), and then washing the laptop may actually be feasible(although I wouldn’t do it unless I was ready to junk the laptop). I don’t particularly want to clean my laptop’s keyboard.
i would not suggest any taking things apart for the nonexperienced person. there are lots of plastic guides and catches that can be broken. there are lots of small screws that are not interchangable and need to go back in the same spot. things have to be undone in a certain order and then reversed, you might not even realize what is happening as you are wiggling things apart.
with it off i would do a vacuum cleaner brushing. then a moist Q tip with isopropyl alcohol as suggested. it is hard to hold with the keys downward and clean without dropping. if you don’t have help or don’t want to risk things then have it open like a book on its side, do the key tops and sides that face up; then flip.
i would prevent the problem as much as possible by using an external keyboard and mouse as much as possible. they are easily and cheaply replaced if you damage them.
Well, you definitely shouldn’t pour water on your laptop’s keyboard - it is not water-tight.
I spilled a beer on it once while laptop was running. Computer survived, but keyboard “burned” - some paths short-circuited and most keys stopped working.
To clean it I recommend to turn it upside-down and shake it till most of stuff will come out and than just wipe the keys with damp cloth (I personally also pour some window cleaner on it - it is quite good at dissolving dried skin).
If you want to disassemble your computer, first try to find service manual - just google “<<Your model number>> service manual”. It will describe how to do it properly without braking stuff.
I read some posts recommending removing the keyboard first - it won’t help. There is a foil with circuit paths inside it - it is the first thing to go bad if water gets there. In fact to be completely safe you would have to remove every key and wash them separately, but it is just too much work and they break way too easily… trust me, I know.