So, a drunk AFA Cadet spilled a Keystone Light (uhhh, couldn’t it have been classier than Keystone?) on my laptop on Saturday night while I was gone, and now 6-7 keys don’t work, including A, S, and D. It is acutally quite difficult to write a paper without those three important keys.
So, what’s the straight dope from here out? Should I take it some place to get cleaned? Can I purchase a new keyboard? How much will it be? Would I be likely to get HP to do a warranty replacement on it?
Or should I just drop my roomate a bill for a new laptop?
Unless you are comfy with getting uber-geeky you’d best drop a bill on your room mate or send it in to manuf service along with a check for 250- 300. The standard operating procedure for fixing notebook keyboards is to scan eBay looking for someone wanting to part out a unit with a bad CPU or other embedded component for cheap, or someone who has disassembled a similar unit and is selling the good parts. I did this with an old IBM Thinkpad a few years ago that my kid had dropped, and made more on the parts than I paid for the entire unit a year earlier.
The warning about uber-geek comfort is because replacing a keyboard requires some degree of comfort with dis-assembling a notebook. The actual procedure is usually not rocket science. Other than a set of small screwdrivers, all it takes patience and the determination not to force anything, but if you screw up and break a connector on the mainboard you are in deep, deep shit. You alos need to find an online techical manual because without a step by step guide finding all the little hidden latches and connectors and blind screws notebook manufs are fond of using is an exercise in frustration. .
What is the unit model #? If it is a year or three old you’ll actually have better luck than if it were new getting replacements as some will be in the busted- parted out pipeline on eBay.
Anyway. Having replaced several notebook keyboards I can tell you it is usually a major PITA, and if the moisture has gotten beyond the keyboard you’ve just wasted xx dollars on the replacement part as well.
Another avenue to go is the no-cost try washing it route.
A few months ago, I was called to assist with a Dell laptop that received about half a cup of coffee. With sugar and milk. They’d promptly turned the laptop upside down so coffee wouldn’t drain into the motherboard, drives, etc.
Figuring nothing to lose, I disassembled the thing, popped out the keyboard and rinsed it under plain water for several minutes. I then let it dry overnight. Next day, re-assembled it, and all was well.
Hmm. My experience is quite different from Astro’s. My kitten ripped a key off of my Dell Inspiron keyboard that I couldn’t fix. I ordered a new one from Dell for $25, installed it in 15 minutes, and now have nearly one full spare keyboard for the next time my cat attacks my computer.
The really gotta be careful part of removing a laptop keyboard is the plastic ribbon cable. You don’t want to tear or scratch that. The ends usually slide into a plastic bracket and are held in with another piece of plastic that locks into the bracket.
Go the eBay route for laptop parts, I have done this several times.
If you’re lucky enough to have a Macintosh iBook, it’s insanely easy to replace the keyboard. A few weeks I popped out all my keys to clean underneath, and the shift key didn’t fare so well upon re-entry…I had to replace the entire keyboard. As luck would have it, the computer was less than a year old and was still covered by warranty, so the local repair shop replaced the keyboard in about five minutes. Now it looks a lot better than any cleaning on my part would have rendered.
I feel your pain. I dumped a whole bottle of apple juice on mine. And in the process of trying to dump out the liquid, broke off 2 keys. You really should leave it off for a couple days. Beer, like apple juice, will probably get sticky, which is a bitch. But the insides have a lovely carmel scent.
I’ve swapped out the keyboard on my PowerBook for one I snagged on eBay. The left Shift key had stopped working dependably.
Most brands of keyboards are going to connect via one or more ribbon cables snapped into a retainer clip. You may want a magnifying glass to see how they unsnap if you don’t already know (you don’t want to mutilate it or anything). Some keyboards may have mechanical retaining devices, the PowerBook just has retaining tabs that pull back out of the way from within the expansion/battery bays.
Easier than replacing the screen, that’s for sure.