oh dear, yesterday while slaving over the law books with laptop to hand to look up all those cases, i knocked my water bottle. it didn't fall over, but sent a few droplets of water flying and onto the screen and keyboard of the laptop. i spend some time taking all the keys off and drying it all and making sure it was all seemingly free from water, but now the "b", "1" and windows buttons don't work 🙁

i have left it to dry, but today the situation's the same. anyone got any tips? i'd rather not take it somewhere, as i would assume they'd try to get me to pay as much as poss to sort it… anyone? 🙁

I don't know anything about computers (good start, eh!) but if only a few drops of water fell on it then I'm thinking the broken keys are perhaps as a result of someone taking them off and drying them…

not sure that helps much, sorry.

that would be a reasonable shout, but i forgot to point out that they didn't work pre-removal and still don't. i'm 100% certain that no damage was caused by the buttons removal or replacement. def something more internal, sadly.

Don't say anything you fool! 😆

She will start using it, might not even use the keys B 1 or Win. If she does just say it was working fine yesterday. What is a relationship without a few little lies?

similar thing happened to my girlfriends laptop half a pint of water soaked in over night.
half the keys dont work so she just got a cheap travel keyboard to use instead. bit of a pain in the arse but i'm guessing Repair will be much more than a tenner!

usual advice is to leave the thign in a warm room for 48 hours before tryign anythign too drastic. Don't bung it on a radiator but an airign cupboard will be fine.

after thatit can get complex and expensive if you want the keyboard replaced as laptops have proprietary parts and are often a bugger to work on.

If drying it out doesn't work Google "Replacement Keyboard" and the model of the laptop depending on the brand you may find a cheep OEM replacement. How hard it is to replace the keyboard will depend on the design on the laptop but its often quite straight forward

what laptop is it?

dmiller, it's a philips h12y, like this:
.

graham, do you think it would work to replace only the keyboard? i figured that the issue would be more at some sort of motherboard level after the water has gone below the keyboard level?

(sofa – too late, i already have!)

ah soz mate – if it was a different brand I might have been able to sort you out.

as for the keyboard try re-seating the key caps:
http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dsn/en/document?docid=CD861594D80064A7E030A68F27285BBC&c=us&l=en&s=gen

david.

It's probably still wet inside. Much electronics is washed with water during production anyway. – Shame you didn't throw distilled water though!

Let it dry some more, then exercise the dodgy buttons a lot. Probably no more than a bit of calcium deposit in the keyboard dome.

Take the battery out and LEAVE the battery out while it dries, and leave it somewhere warm but not roasting, on top of a dry towel on the radiator. Leave it for a day or two. Try again.

my daugther decided to throw baked beans over my macbook – now have intermittently working V,B,N,M and . buttons. Bought a cheap bluetooth keyboard as replacement / repair would cost minimum of £40 for parts alone…

Surely a macbook would have been impervious to the beans and, in fact, come with such good software that it could cook the beans with smug waves? 😆

I spilt tea over my Macbook's keyboard. Still worked fine, but the key backlighting turned an interesting tea colour. Fortunately replaced shortly afterwards due to a completely unrelated fault covered under warranty. 🙂

Spray the whole lot copiously with WD40. Leave upside down in warm place overnight.

Alternatively, put a tray of parrafin on top of a radiator shelf and hold keyboard over it upside down all night.

P.S. We all know it wasn't really just water that got splashed. Have you cleared out the browsing history and cookies?

If it's only a couple of keys not working, and the thing works otherwise, it's almost certainly just the keyboard switches – as mentioned, try letting it dry out. I'd be inclined *not* to spray it with anything else until it's had a few days to dry, then maybe some switch cleaner (eg from Maplin), and then *only* on the keys that are giving you grief.

Surely a macbook would have been impervious to the beans and, in fact, come with such good software that it could cook the beans with smug waves?

depends who made the beans.

Similar thing happened to me. We left it in the airing cupboard overnight and it worked fine the following day…