Sloshed a couple of tablespoons of wine onto my Asus G74 laptop key oats last night, around the number pad. Immediately depowered, battery out, unplugged, and then left overnight upside down with paper towels on the keyboard. Today it started up fine but most inputs from the keyboard result in 3333333333333 being endlessly sent. I can type a couple of keys, but not many. The problem isn't, I don't think, the 3 keys (as if I open a text document and click in it - no typing) but something in the comms between keyboard and PC. It has been suggested that the keyboard microcontroller is damaged/shorting out on a bit of wine somehow. I am planning to take the laptop to a good repair shop tomorrow. Any other advice?
Maybe no more drinking wine out of tablespoons. Generally with water infiltration, rice is an excellent way to pull out moisture. Not sure about the cost-benefit on that with a laptop level of small gaps or with wine residue (especially red), but it works great on wet phones and the like.
The big problem with anything like wine, coffee, soda, etc, isn't the liquid in the end, it's the solids that are left behind after the liquids evaporate. Even if you managed to prevent the intrusion of the liquid beyond the keyboard, unless the keyboard was a truly waterproof model, it's probably hosed, if only because of the remaining residue shorting out the circuits for the keys. I unfortunately have managed to kill my laptop keyboard recently, as have a few of my clients, and though we've all been lucky enough avoid damage beyond the keyboard, a keyboard replacement was called for each time, sadly.
Take it from someone who's lost several desktop keyboards (though, through some miracle, no laptop keyboards): you're screwed.
Oh, also, a reputable shop won't take longer than an hour to fix the problem if they have the part and the whole thing should cost less than $100USD. Most places are unlikely to have the part on hand and will need to order it though.
Thanks. I will go and ask their opinion. I was planning on replacing the laptop this year (go go deducting it from my taxable income - yay being an author forever!) but didn't want to change quite so soon. Guess I can always USB cable a keyboard if it isn't really fixable.
Depends on the laptop. When I (or my wife, I can't remember) poured beer on her old Macbook, I instantly (I'm talking sub-millisecond here) had the thing flipped, off, and battery out. After an overnight dry, I had a few sticky keys, but compared to her last Dell that I dumped beer on, it was going to be a royal pain to get into the keyboard tray. I ended up settling for lots of pressing of keys to de-sticky them, and the laptop works to this day (gifted to the sister-in-law). The Dell, in comparison, I could pop the keys off with a screw driver. That Dell just died (gifted to my dad), after many years of life. Laptops are fiddly. I suspect this generation of laptop will be the last that's actually user-servicable before the Macbook Air/Ultrabook aesthetic fully takes root. I'm of mixed feelings about this, but honestly, I'm going to side with the smaller and lighter laptops in the end.
Fun fact: Macbooks have a second supplementary battery for use in emergency situations like the primary battery being removed.
Decided to pick up a USB keyboard for cheap and worry about fixing this (1 to 4 weeks, depending on parts, according to the shop) once I get a newer laptop later this year. However, even with the keyboard plugged in the laptop keyboard is still operations and will, unless I carefully mash some keys a couple of times, keep sending crazy key entries to the system. Wish I could disable the laptop keyboard, but I can't see how. Annoying! Never mind.
Yeah it should be under keyboards. Press Win+Pause/Break to get to Device Manager quickly. That's also a pretty beefy computer, it might be nice to have as a portable computer even if you need to take a keyboard with it. You could also maybe get lucky on an eBay sale like this, since laptop keyboards are frequently parted out after a laptop breaks: http://compare.ebay.com/like/261142056656?var=lv<yp=AllFixedPriceItemTypes&var=sbar There are instructions on removing the keyboard here (it's not as easy as I thought it would be, but it's still pretty simple): http://btoforums.com/showthread.php?t=3525
I can't disable either device under Keyboard (no disable option), and under "Human Interface Devices" I can only disable one of the several devices there - and this does nothing to disable the keyboard either! Thanks, Pogo, might do something like that in the future.
Ahhh, interesting. There are some solutions here: http://superuser.com/questions/346570/how-can-i-disable-my-laptops-built-in-keyboard Although essentially those two solutions are a way to get windows to stop re-installing the driver after uninstalling it. The hardware way is to follow the instructions to take it out, and just remove the ribbon that goes from the keyboard into the mobo.
