Stay Away From my Laptop Woman!
Posted by Stephen on
October 15, 2006
I spent most of Saturday cleaning out a milkshake (yes, a milkshake…chocolate to be exact) out of my laptop. Kelly tripped and dumped it all over my laptop sitting innocently on the coffee table. She didn’t tell me till it was too late. I actually had to find out on my own. The keyboard had already become contaminated by the time I discovered it.
She tried to clean it with a damp cloth. It was probably dripping cuz when I found the laptop, it was damp around the area, and there was crap caked on the outside. I was not amused. As shown above, I stripped it right down to the motherboard and used cuetips, contact cleaner, compressed air and whatever else I could find to clean it out. Everything seems to work OK, and I even had a chance to change the thermal compound as the stuff that came stock turned rock hard. In a laptop, you’ll always want that stuff to be moist and functional. The air exhausting from the inside is definitely much hotter than before.
I finally found a place that could get the right keyboard. They want about $100 shipped for it. I was not pleased. The only person that has any right to have an accident with my laptop is ME and since I never have accidents with my laptop, it should NEVER HAPPEN!
I have no laptop for 2 weeks and Kelly will be sucking up 24/7 till I get my keyboard…provided that it actually works. I’m not actually 100% sure yet. I’m not looking forward to owning a $2000 doorstop.
Ouch! You better hope it works again!
She BETTER be sucking up big time! 2 weeks of sucking up might be worth it though!
Man…bad day for both of you. Everyone knows that accidents happen, but that doesn’t make it any easier to not be angry about it. I hope it was subconsciously on purpose cuz you spend too much time on it, hmmm? Heh…j/k…I’m sure it was just one of those bummer things that happens.
Er…I meant “I hope it *WAS NOT* subconsciously on purpose” …sorry typo.
Well, it powers on, and boots into windows, but there is a stuck key error all the time because the keyboard is caked in crud that I can’t seem to get at. Also, all the keys from Enter down are dead. I can operate the machine with an external keyboard. However, without the keyboard, all the laptop functions are disabled since they are mapped to it. I’m just glad the touchpad still works. That piece was even more than the keyboard and would have taken a month to get becuase it is a fairly unique piece to that series of laptop.
I’m quite pleased at my restoration job. It was a total mess. It has finally stopped smelling like chocolate. I guess running it overnight got rid of the rest of the smell. It does run a lot cooler now that I changed out the thermal paste. Actually, the paste was more like chips of thermal compound. It was dry, dry, dry. Had to scrape it off with a razorblade and contact cleaner.
Well, I’m trapped in my office for 2 weeks at least, and I can’t use my laptop for my writing class either.
Well if it does not work you could get a M1210 like me
Even crippled with no keyboard, my notebook topples your M1210! LOL!
FIXED!
http://www.stephenfung.net/the-laptop-is-fixed/