Yesterday, while busy doing assignment using my laptop, I felt hungry and decided to open a can of sardine in tomato sauce to be eaten with white bread. Not having a proper dinner table (I’m a college student staying in a cramped hostel room), I usually have my dinner and on my work table, in front of the laptop. Well, while opening the sardine, the pull tab broke off halfway and some of the content (the layer of oil) spilled onto my laptop (the keyboard and the screen to be precise) :smack:
Now I have a 15 inch laptop which reeks of fish smell. I tried cleaning it using the conventional method but it still reeks. Now what’s the next best step for me to take to get rid of the smell without frying my laptop?
Oh, and you are free to laugh at me for the dumb mistake I made. I should have opened it beside the sink instead
It’s unlikely any of it is in the sealed screen section. The smell is coming from the keyboard. On some notebooks you can pop off and replace the keycaps. If you can do this safely on yours you can probably use a Q-tip and some isopropyl alcohol to clean out the majority of the contamination. The danger here is breaking off some of the plastic key structure in removing the keys, if this happens you are boned and have to replace the keyboard.
In your scenario I would most likely simply go to eBay and if I can get a replacement keyboard for $20-$40 or so I would dump the old one and move on with life. This assumes you have some minor mechanical ability to safely unclip and unscrew things.
My best suggestion…being that I work on them thar puter type stuff…
Look up how to remove the keyboard on your model of laptop.
Soak in a small tray of alcohol for a while, change alcohol as needed to carry away more fish/tomato byproducts.
Once it seems to lack the scent of Sardina pilchardus, allow keyboard to dry in a sunny windowsill. Lacking that, perhaps a hair dryer on low for a while to make sure it is thoroughly dry.
Once you are sure it is dry, leave it for 24 hours to dry some more.
