(no subject)

[chasingtides]

My mom spilled a drink on my laptop and now I can't use about half the keyboard. (I'm posting from the family computer.) I'm freaking out (hello unbacked up thesis) and don't know what to do.

Do anyone have any advice at all?

Comments

[skola.livejournal.com]

The keyboard may have short circuited, but the harddrive should still be ok. If you have a portable hard drive and a working mouse, you should be able to copy the thesis over, otherwise a computer tech should be able to remove the drive and place it in a new computer.

[nightengalesknd.livejournal.com]

1) If the mouse works, shove a USB drive into your computer and save that thesis manually.

2) Try hooking up an external keyboard.

3) Keys can probably be taken off, underneath cleaned, and reattached.

4) Do not try drying the keys with a hairdrier.

[shrewreader.livejournal.com]

Keyboard may be removable and replaceable. Also useful to determine how bad the damage is.

I strongly recommend Nightengal's directions.

[brni.livejournal.com]

what skola said. also, a USB flash drive should be plenty big for saving a thesis, and they are cheap (like, less than $10)

be careful about liquid sloshing around - make sure that it's as dry as you can make it before powering it up. You can set it in front of a fan to help drying.

what kind of drink got spilled? drinks with no sugar are more likely to leave you with a salvageable machine.

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

It was my beer. Which is still sitting there because I haven't drunk it.

[jeanniemac.livejournal.com]

I second the "hook up an external keyboard". This is what the hubby and I do with our laptops at home. We only really use the actually laptop keyboards when we are traveling.

Also, check and see if the folks that made your laptop sell replacement parts. Our Dell laptop ended up with a stuck key and we replace the keyboard piece (which we removed by opening up the laptop itself, not hard to do at all) for about $25.

[rebeccasama.livejournal.com]

You should be able to back up your thesis if you plug in a thumb drive to the comp. Also, they do sell keyboards you can plug into the usb (http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=1048754) which are cheap and can hold you over till you can have someone come out to replace the laptop keyboard for you.

I spilled a beer on mine once and after I let it dry out and did a restart it was ok. Also, I once got some juice on a key (which made it really sticky) and I was able to pop off the key and carefully clean it with a minute amount of rubbing alcohol on a q-tip. Be careful not to use anything metal if you pry off a key, it can short the whole keyboard. Would recommend rubbing alcohol only in last ditch effort though - keyboards are notoriously easy to fry.

[jaxia.livejournal.com]

Yes to the external keyboard.

Also, I got into the habit a long time ago of using my online email accounts (Yahoo, Gmail) as file storage -- it's nice to be able to access my resume from any computer!