The simplest way to clean a laptop keyboard is with a clean cloth, a can of compressed air, a Q-tip and any type of liquid cleaner. First give the entire keyboard a blast with the compressed air then with a soft cloth and a bit of the cleaner just wipe off all of the keys. A Q-tip soaked in cleaner will work between the keys. Unless, your keyboard was like mine – grungy, cookie crumb laden and toxic.
A top down look at my keyboard (before):
In all honesty, I could have lived with the grungy keyboard a while longer. But, some of the keys had begin to stick and that bothered me no end. When the keys start to ‘crunch’ when you hit them it’s definitely time for some remedial action.
A closer look shows he grunge under the actual keys – ugh!
In cases like my keyboard above, more serious actions had to be taken to get rid of over 6 years accumulation of dust, dirt, debris cookie crumbs. This meant removing the entire keyboard from the laptop to enable a real good cleaning. My laptop is a Dell Inspirion 6400 but the method is pretty much the same no matter what type of laptop you happen to have.
First step: unplug the A/C cord and take out the battery
The first step is always to unplug the A/C cord and remove the battery so you don’t get any accidental start-ups – or shocks! The next step is to remove the hinge cover attached to the display to permit access to the screws holding the keyboard in place. On my Dell, it was simple, I just had to use a small flat screwdriver to pry the hinge cover loose.
Remove the hinge cover
On some laptops, the hinge cover is secured with screws located in the battery compartment on the back of the laptop. Your laptop’s manual should show you how to remove the hinge cover.
Identify screws attaching keyboard to laptop
Once the hinge cover is off, it’s pretty easy to spot the 2 tabs with screws that secure the keyboard to the laptop. The image above shows where the two tabs and screws are located on my Dell.
Remove the screws (usually just 2)
Once the screws are out you can remove the entire keyboard just by pulling it forward. It will snap out of the connections easily.
Disconnect the cable connecting keyboard to the system board
The final step in completely removing the keyboard from the laptop is to release the keyboard cable from the keyboard connector on the system board. Usually, a small plastic lever holds the cable in place. Just raise the lever by pulling it up and out and then slide the cable connector out to release it. With that done, you can now take the keyboard away from the laptop to clean it.
Keyboard is now free and can be easily cleaned
I used a clean soft cloth sprayed with a bit of The Solution to clean the keys. Any non-abrasive cleaner will work even Windex. Just try and be careful not to dislodge the actual key caps as they can be a nuisance to get back on. I know because I knocked off the ‘Q’ key and had some fun re-connecting it.
With the keyboard out, it’s easy to clean out the base plate
Putting things back together is pretty easy starting with connecting the keyboard cable back to the system board and locking it in place with the lever. After that just snap the keyboard back in its slots, re-insert the screws and then snap the hinge cover back in place.
All back together looking good as new!
If for some strange reason, you get a message on start-up or your keyboard doesn’t work the likely culprit is the cable attaching the keyboard to the system board. You can actually test this before you snap the keyboard back in place along with the hinge cover. Just make sure you pull the A/C cord out again prior to putting things back together again.
Have a great Tuesday, and thanks again for visiting!
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