Thinkpads Forum

I spilled a tablespoon of hong kong (oolong) tea on my keyboard, the upper right corner. My computer is a T60p with 15" UXGA screen, if that makes any difference.

Anyway, I shook the tea out, which was mostly water, by holding the notebook upside down. The return, pgup, pgdn and backspace keys seemed a little soft and harder than usual to activate, but otherwise ok. Then this morning, when I turned on the T60p, I noticed that the pgdn and cursorup keys no longer work. I popped off the keys to take a look, but everything's clean, nothing seems out of the ordinary.

Any advice would be appreciated. I'm hoping the problem will somehow resolve itself over time, but I'm not too optimistic.

It's kind of important to immediately remove any power source to a device when liquid is spilled in it or on it. Liquid creates a path to short circuit boards. Sometimes after a few days when things completely dry out they will start functioning again, but you'll be lucky it that is the case. You might try getting a can of air, removing the keyboard and forcing air around the area of the stuck keys, or even popping off the keys and see if some residue is there you could clean off with a 50 50 mix of water and isopropyl alchohol. The alchohol dries the water completely. We used to use an electronic component cleaner called Blue Shower, you might google for similar type products to spray in sensitive areas, this cleans and dries immediately with no residue.

Hah! Found it, haven't used it for years but it does do a good job of cleaning out liquids with sugar spilled into electronic devices
http://www.elexp.com/che_1677.htm


PLEASE put your location in your profile to continue posting on this board. thanks.

Hey Kyocera,

Thanks for the helpful info. I'm going to look into getting Blue Shower. And I updated my profile to add my location.

Thanks again!

You know, with a T60 holding it upside down is exactly what you don't want to do. It has drain holes on the bottom. You want to keep it level and upright so that it will drain out.

And I updated my profile to add my location

Thanks a lot and good luck getting that working.

I do remember seeing a keyboard for sale in the marketplace for a t60, if yours is non repairable.

I have read from some websites that they put the keyboard in a pail and wash it with pure distilled water.

Some users even stated that if the tea gets into the computer, what they do is to soaked the whole computer exclude the LCD into very diluted alcohol (very diluted/very weak alcohol) and wait for a few hours before draining the alcohol out from the computer and wash it with pure distilled water and left it to dry for days before switching it on. And yes, it worked.


USER EDIT: weak alcohol means Pure Denatured Alcohol

You should have let the machine stay level. Liquid would have slowly drained from the two spill holes in the bottom of the unit, its designed for that...

By turning the system, you probably splashed liquid where it may have damaged circuitry...