Clean a Laptop Keyboard
Laptop keyboards take in a lot of dirt, dust and grime. Occasionally cleaning the keyboard will make your laptop look nicer and preserve its life.
Steps
- Start by turning your machine off. Unplug it, disconnect it and remove any USB wires or memory sticks.
- For simple cleaning, tilt your laptop forward. Bang the back and hopefully anything lodged between the keys will fall out!
- Take the end of a teaspoon and wrap it in a wet-wipe. Drag the teaspoon along all the edges of the keys and keyboard. This will pick up any dust and dirt.
- Take a vacuum cleaner and run it over the keys. This will rid your laptop of any more dirt. Alternatively, you can use a hair-dryer to blow it away but ensure you repeat step 2.
- If you are still having problems, remove your laptop keys. So far, we have avoided doing this because it is time-consuming, annoying and easy to get wrong.
- Research your laptops brand name and see if you do have keys that can actually be taken off
- Be careful, because the keys are often held on by fragile plastic tabs. Gently pop them off and store them somewhere safe.
- Run your wet-wipes over the bare key-board. Q-tips also work well with this, after soaking them in anything that evaporates (rubbing alcohol and hydrogen peroxide) so that you do not get moisture under the keyboard.
- Pop the keys back on. There will occasionally be keys with metal "stands" on the back - these are easy to slide back into their rails. Other keys will simply require you to depress the corners.
- You can also wash the keys, but this makes losing keys easier.
- Finished.
Tips
- Dip the keys in alcohol to disinfect them. (Do this only if disinfecting the keys is necessary. Alcohol will remove the printing on most types of keys.)
- Depressing the raised corner will be enough to pop it into place, should you find a loose key during use. They are also visible because they lie at an angle, not parallel to the other keys.
- To pop off keys, use a flat head screwdriver, just make sure not to lift up too hard.
- Find a diagram of a keyboard (or take a picture of your own), and make sure all your keys are back in the right place.
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