*This is a long story about a recent mishap I had with my computer. You might get really bored if you are not interested*
I don't know if any of you have ever had this happen, but this is something I have stupidly done at least twice.
The scenario is that I will be drinking pop next to my computer. (yea yea, I know, dumb thing to do) So on at least two occasions, I have accidentally spilled pop on my keyboard. The first incident was a doozy, a complete disaster, because the pop bottle tipped over and spilled all over my keyboard. On my then still relatively new laptop! I tried to clean it up as fast as I could, frantically. But to no avail. The keys ended up sticky as hell and didn't work properly.
I ended up taking it to a repair shop, and they charged me $100. They then took the keyboard apart, cleaned the insides of all the gunk, and said they would have to replace the whole keyboard. That cost me another $60 (it was the cheapest one) We are talking about an internal keyboard by the way, the one that comes built into the laptop.
Anyway. so now the story about the second most recent incident - this happened last night. I had a 2 liter pop bottle in my hand and it accidentally was slipping out of my hand, so I tried to regain my grip, and that caused a swaying motion of the pop bottle. Well you can guess what happened next. Pop sprayed out, but this time it was on BOTH of my keyboards.
I'm not making this up, lol. See, I use an expensive mechanical gaming keyboard as my main keyboard, which I use underneath my laptop, which is on a stand. Well, the pop splashed not only on my laptop keyboard, but on my mechanical keyboard as well!
The only good thing was it wasn't a huge amount of pop, I mean, it was not a trivial amount, but it could have been a lot worse.
So anyway, I then immediately thought to myself - not this again, you damn idiot! - and tried to clean it up as best I could. I even sprayed a special electronics type cleaner into the keyboards, knowing that is improper, because you are only supposed to spray it on a cloth and then clean. I thought it might help dissolve any pop down in the base of the keyboard. And hell, I was desperate.
So trying to shorten the story. I thought at first after cleaning it up, that all was well. Fired up the computer, no problemo. But then, when I tried typing anything, it would go haywire. Key presses would open weird programs and make a weird windows-like warning/error sounds.
What is even weirder, is that I have a wireless keyboard. I hooked that up, but still had the same problems! Typing any characters would result in either weird programs being opened and/or a windows annoying noise being made. WTF?? I couldn't figure it out.
Then I disconnected my mechanical keyboard. Then all of a sudden, the keyboard worked again. I couldn't believe it. Finally, I knew that something to do with my mechanical keyboard was the culprit, and apparently causing all keyboard strokes, no matter even from a different keyboard, to go haywire.
I then browsed for help on internet tech advice forums. I finally found a thread where a guy said that sometimes this can happen because the windows key is held down, or other keys are being held down for some reason.
So I hit the windows key on my mechanical keyboard, and the scroll lock key too, and even caps lock, alt, fn, and ctrl for good measure too. Finally that fixed it! It now works normally. I think it may have been the scroll lock key being held down for some reason as a result of the pop spill, but not sure
So, a happy ending. Disaster averted. And all my keyboards are working fine once again. Thanks to those who were patient enough to read the whole exhausting story.
I don't know if any of you have ever had this happen, but this is something I have stupidly done at least twice.
The scenario is that I will be drinking pop next to my computer. (yea yea, I know, dumb thing to do) So on at least two occasions, I have accidentally spilled pop on my keyboard. The first incident was a doozy, a complete disaster, because the pop bottle tipped over and spilled all over my keyboard. On my then still relatively new laptop! I tried to clean it up as fast as I could, frantically. But to no avail. The keys ended up sticky as hell and didn't work properly.
I ended up taking it to a repair shop, and they charged me $100. They then took the keyboard apart, cleaned the insides of all the gunk, and said they would have to replace the whole keyboard. That cost me another $60 (it was the cheapest one) We are talking about an internal keyboard by the way, the one that comes built into the laptop.
Anyway. so now the story about the second most recent incident - this happened last night. I had a 2 liter pop bottle in my hand and it accidentally was slipping out of my hand, so I tried to regain my grip, and that caused a swaying motion of the pop bottle. Well you can guess what happened next. Pop sprayed out, but this time it was on BOTH of my keyboards.
I'm not making this up, lol. See, I use an expensive mechanical gaming keyboard as my main keyboard, which I use underneath my laptop, which is on a stand. Well, the pop splashed not only on my laptop keyboard, but on my mechanical keyboard as well!
The only good thing was it wasn't a huge amount of pop, I mean, it was not a trivial amount, but it could have been a lot worse.
So anyway, I then immediately thought to myself - not this again, you damn idiot! - and tried to clean it up as best I could. I even sprayed a special electronics type cleaner into the keyboards, knowing that is improper, because you are only supposed to spray it on a cloth and then clean. I thought it might help dissolve any pop down in the base of the keyboard. And hell, I was desperate.
So trying to shorten the story. I thought at first after cleaning it up, that all was well. Fired up the computer, no problemo. But then, when I tried typing anything, it would go haywire. Key presses would open weird programs and make a weird windows-like warning/error sounds.
What is even weirder, is that I have a wireless keyboard. I hooked that up, but still had the same problems! Typing any characters would result in either weird programs being opened and/or a windows annoying noise being made. WTF?? I couldn't figure it out.
Then I disconnected my mechanical keyboard. Then all of a sudden, the keyboard worked again. I couldn't believe it. Finally, I knew that something to do with my mechanical keyboard was the culprit, and apparently causing all keyboard strokes, no matter even from a different keyboard, to go haywire.
I then browsed for help on internet tech advice forums. I finally found a thread where a guy said that sometimes this can happen because the windows key is held down, or other keys are being held down for some reason.
So I hit the windows key on my mechanical keyboard, and the scroll lock key too, and even caps lock, alt, fn, and ctrl for good measure too. Finally that fixed it! It now works normally. I think it may have been the scroll lock key being held down for some reason as a result of the pop spill, but not sure
So, a happy ending. Disaster averted. And all my keyboards are working fine once again. Thanks to those who were patient enough to read the whole exhausting story.