Part II

Damn I did it again! But only worse this time...

I had a glass filled with a fairly sticky soft drink standing in between my Laptop and an external hard drive on my desk. After finishing up with what I was busy with, I wanted to move the laptop to a different location. I totally forgot that the external HDD was still connected to the laptop. The USB cable snagged on the glass and spilled the soft drink all over the keyboard.

I immediately followed the same procedure as the previous time and immediately switched the laptop off, unplugged the power and battery and dried off excess liquid by turning it over etc with a towel, before starting the drying process. Because it was a sticky liquid that was involved I was very concerned. The last time it happened, after some drying, it at least started to power up before cutting out again. This time it was dead as a doornail. Thinking about what Jason said re. using water to wash circuit boards, I thought to myself... Would it do harm to pour a bit of water over the keyboard in an effort to dilute and loosen the sticky stuff? So I took a chance (I did not want to disassemble the laptop to get to the circuitry and keyboard because it's still under warranty) and poured a bit of water over the keyboard on purpose (while powered off) and then repeated the entire drying process.

Many hours later I tried it again and it powered up. After checking the HDD for consistency the Windows boot screen appeared. Except it wouldn't accept my password. Googling around on my phone I found that Soda spills etc. can often nuke a laptop keyboard. I had an external USB wireless keyboard and used that which was working fine so at least I could utilize the machine. But I shuddered at what the cost would be to replace the laptop keyboard. I tested the laptop keyboard from time to time on notepad and it was definitely a case of 'sticky keys'. Some very weird combinations were being displayed/happening when I pressed certain keys.

However, after using it with the USB keyboard for about 6 hours, I tested the laptop keyboard again and it was working fine!
Lucky escape no.2.

Since Dell in their wisdom have decided not to implement a spill proof keyboard, I'm now going to specify the machine on my insurance (which I should have done in the first place.)

Accidents happen quickly and spilling liquid on a laptop keyboard seems to happen a lot gathering from the articles I've read on the subject.

I just started a forum and had 3 bots from Finland register within 48 hours with no advertising whatsoever. The amount of spam is a bloody nuisance, good job on the cleanup!

I've just finished cleaning this place up, the memberlist looks more or less like it did before these spammers came with their botnet. If I've missed a few, please point it out/help by deleting them

Agreed.

*Sigh* more bloatware, more stuff for the cooler-as-ekke gang, and less for people who actually use computers to do work.