Laptop Keyboard Repair

Laptop keyboard repair is one of the more common jobs performed on laptops, it's also one of the easier repairs to carry out providing the following hasn't happened.

A spill of anything but water on a keyboard will 9 times out of 10 leave you in a situation that involves replacing the keyboard all together.

Keyboards are manufactured in such a way that leaves little to no room to clean out messy spills.


Basically any liquid containing sugar (soft drinks, beer, wine, coffee or tea) are bad news...

A couple of laptop keyboard repair do’s and don’ts in the event of a spill..

DON’T panic. Panic makes us do stupid things, think before you react.

DON’T use a hairdryer to dry out a spill...melted keys are hard to type with.

DON’T tilt the machine upside down or on its side (if you do feel the need it's better to tilt it to the side that houses the CDROM as the CDROM area inside the machine has less components on it than the mainboard).

DO switch the machine off immediately and resist switching it back on until you're certain the spill has dried. Survey the damage after you've dried it out. At this point you could remove the keyboard and try the machine using an external keyboard to see if anything else has been affected.

This diagram shows what a basic keyboard looks like, the ribbon cable which connects the keyboard to the motherboard is indicated by the red arrow.

The ribbon cable can also be located on the front edge of the keyboard depending on the age and model of the laptop you have.  Note the keyboard holder (thin strip of plastic) that sits on the top edge of the laptop keyboard needs to be removed to get access to the screws holding the keyboard down. Most of the current laptop keyboards are like the diagram below.

Traditionally a spill will kill a keyboard or at best at least some function will be lost. I have only ever been successful with a laptop keyboard repair that involved a water spill, anything else normally results in a tragic loss and putting your old faithful keyboard to rest.. RIP.