Upgrading & Fixing Laptops DUMmIES

6. Carefully dry off the area before replacing the cap.


7. Examine the key carefully before reinstalling to avoid forcing it into
   the wrong place.

In extreme situations, you may want to lubricate the keys or the underlying

switches. This solution is for a problem I hope you don’t face: seriously stuck

or seized switches. Before you lubricate, follow the preceding instructions to

remove and clean the keys. Purchase a dry film lubricant from an electronics

supply shop, and use a fine watercolor brush to apply a tiny bit of the solu-

tion on a corner of an obscure key, like the PrtSc or Pause/Break cap to make

sure that the lubricant does not damage the plastic. Allow the solution to

fully dry before deciding whether to proceed. If the lubricant seems to be

appropriate for your system, very lightlyapply a tiny amount of the lubricant

into all of the guide notches of each key. Then apply the lubricant to the

moving parts of the switches. Allow all pieces to completely dry before

reassembling the keyboard.

When the Keys Don’t Stroke .......................................................................

Every once in a while a computer user ends up with a dead keyboard. (As

the guys from Monty Pythonwould say, “Dead. Demised. A stiff. Bereft of life.

Kicked the bucket. An ex-keyboard.”)

Here the cause is usually electrical or electronic. An electrical breakdown

could be a frayed or broken connecting cable; an electronic problem could

be caused by failure of the keyboard’s processor, which translates key

strokes into scan codes that the CPUS recognizes and acts upon.

If your laptop’s keyboard is demised, you have three choices.

Poking your head in ...........................................................................

Open the laptop, removing whatever pieces stand in the way of getting at the

connections to the internal keyboard. (These may include plastic casings, the

hard drive, the battery, and sometimes much more.) Check the ribbon cable

and power connector that go between the keyboard and the motherboard.

Sometimes the problem is caused by nothing more than a loose cable. Remove

and reattach the cable, reinstall the parts you removed, and try the system.

For this, and all other work that takes you inside the covers of your laptop,

be sure to consult the repair manual for your machine. You may have

received a copy of the manual at the time of purchase, or you may find the

manual on the Internet, available as a PDF or HTML (Web page). Place the

168 Part III: Laying Hands on the Major Parts