Metropol

Right! My keyboard is in dire need of a good clean.
I occassionally give it the once over with the hoover but i obviously don't do it often enough because everytime i press the 'F' and 'P' there is a crunchy noise that sounds suspiciously like cookie crumbs. After closer inspection i see it is a disgrace

I really want to get inside the laptop to give it a proper, proper clean with soapy water. I've had to stop myself from reaching for the phillips screwdriver a few times because i suspect it will never work the same again.

What is the best way to give a Laptop keyboard a really, really good spring clean without damaging any of the sensitive componants?

Quite literally, you pull the keys off one by one. They don't break, and click right back on again just by aligning and pressing down - honest!*

You may find that, on your laptop, the Space bar and shift keys have a metal bar to hold it down -- if it does, just pull it off in the normal way, it will come loose from the metal.

It feels terrible pulling them off but it's fine in reality -- and the only way.




* If a key DOES break whilst doing this I will not be sued for the emotional despair of getting a new key from the dastardly laptop companies whose name begins with "T" and has 7 letters in its name -- speaking from experience here! Why oh why can't they just post out a new key

Before you do anything, make sure you know where each key goes on the keyboard. You might want to make a rough sketch just in case you are as sad as me to do so.

Use a small flat heat screwdriver to lever each key off the board. Each one should simply pop off. If you have trouble you'd may as well leave them. The keys may have small pads underneath. Make sure you keep the pads with the corresponding keys.

Clean the keyboard with cotton buds slightly damp with water. If they are too wet, water will drop into the keyboard and may cause an eleectrical fault. Repeat this procedure again using rubbing alcohol and cotton buds but not the foam rubber as it disintegrates when used with alcohol.

Some keys may have wires attached and some grease on them, clean these first with cotton buds and naptha if you have it. Remove all traces of the grease.

Place all keys in a kitchen strainer. Spray with household cleaner and let stand for 5 minutes. Rinse with hot water and place keys on paper towels to dry. Let them dry completely.

Place all the rubber pads in a kitchen strainer. Spray with household cleaner and let stand for 5 minutes. Use stopper in the sink so that you don't lose these if they jump out of the strainer. Rinse these thoroughly with hot water and place on paper towels. Fold the towels over and press to squeeze most of the water out of the pieces. Again, let them dry completely.

Place all the rubber components into the keyboard. Install keys with wires. Make sure wire is secured in the key, usually snapped into place. Place ends of wire in the guide slots adjacent to the key location as you align the key. Firmly press down to snap the key into place. Install the rest of the keys by aligning and firmly pressing down.

Hope this makes your laptop all squeeky clean. You might even get some stale biscuit crumbs as a reward. Mmmmmmmm . . . stale biscuit crumbs . . . . .

Good luck
mwp

Ooooooh I wouldn't go about pulling the rubber bits off... that's Risky with a capital R. Pull those off and the delicate apparatus that surrounds it gets shattered into its various pieces -- works out at about 20 minutes a key to put it back at that rate. I'd just be satisfied with a good Hoovering

Yep, be careful with rubber things!
I had a disfunctional 'Y' key as I couldn't get the rubber bit back on. Chucked the whole laptop out in the end.

Oh, so they do.
Thanks for that simple solution. I know my limitations and will use my common sense rom here.

This will sound slightly odd, but if you've a digital camera, a quick photo of the keyboard before you start often aids key replacement later.

PRINT the photo first, though, as the machine often won't do exactly as it's told while all the keytops are removed.

Brad wrote:Yep, be careful with rubber things!
I had a disfunctional 'Y' key as I couldn't get the rubber bit back on. Chucked the whole laptop out in the end.

Is it still broken then?

cdd wrote:Quite literally, you pull the keys off one by one. They don't break, and click right back on again just by aligning and pressing down - honest!*

True. Alot of people do it in my school!

Speaking of laptops, the "fn" key, I know is on a laptop, but is it true that using "Num Lock" stops you from having to hold down the Fn key if you are a fast typer?

I'm not entirely sure what you're reffering to. Holding the FN key lets you tap numbers in the "keypad" style, and there's a button called FN-Lock which also does this.

Frankly save yourself the hassle and use the keys at the top :roll: it's much faster

What I mean is, we used laptops in school, and they had an "Fn" key or something, and the letter keys around the top right area had numbers, on them (i.e. i=5) Holding Fn and then "i" would appear as "i".