Got drunk and puked on my Lenovo Ideapad gaming 3... Can I clean under the keys or will professionals handle it?

I’m sorry, but if you brought this to my shop and I opened it to see chunks of food, without a doubt, we would box it right after.

Uh, this is how we’d do it at the factory.

Remove the keyboard per the manual.

Most Lenovo have ‘spill-proof’ keyboards. Clearly, you spilled, but there are holes that carry the liquid away from your laptop’s innards. So the laptop is fine.

Literally wash the keyboard in warm soapy water, with this very major caveat!!! Only use the green basic original version of either Dawn or Palmolive. You can’t just use any random soap. The rest have ‘grease cutters’ (usually some form of citrus) which will destroy circuit traces; avoid at all costs.

Dry. Dry. Dry some more. Maybe pour some 99% isopropyl to speed up the drying. Let it dry completely. This step is the one everyone screws up.

Now you should have a clean sterile keyboard; reinstall it and game away.

My father, who was a laser technician and also engineered planes for McDonnell Douglas, helped me when this happened to me. Take out your battery and your CMOS battery; constantly press the power button to drain any remaining power from the motherboard’s resistors.

Then, while it’s taken apart (depending on if your keyboard can come out easily without unmounting the motherboard, which mine didn’t), spray it with room temperature water for a bit, let it drain out, place it somewhere warm and dry for 24 hours and let it dry out.

Put it all back together, and it should be just like new.

I was skeptical too, but I did it on the deal that my father would buy me a brand new one if it didn’t work.

Bro’s puke is glowing. Great idea for keyboards without backlighting.

Expensive lesson. At least it still works. Gross.

Don’t pop those keys off, whatever you do.

I genuinely thought someone made an RGB ThinkPad keyboard mod until I read the caption.

No.

Is the puke in the room with us?

I work in IT, and most of our devices are Lenovo. We do support for some healthcare facilities, and some broken laptops they send back are filthy. Tried to send them to Lenovo for repair, and they will not accept them due to biohazard.

Your best bet is buying some 99% alcohol and just dumping it all over the keyboard a few times, or you can remove the keys one by one and do it that way.

What have I just read? :eyes:

Free RGB.

Yooo new color just dropped.

I would rub your face in it so you learn.

And that’s how the zombie infection started.

I did this to a $200 mechanical keyboard. I cleaned the board and still replaced it anyway.

It got that orange glow to it :rofl::sunglasses:.

Cotton swab with 90% isopropyl alcohol could help with some of it; just make sure the laptop is powered off during that.

Or you can try to disassemble the laptop to take the keyboard out, but depending on the model, you still won’t be able to clean it properly, and it requires more tech skills and time.

My guess is that most repair shops would decline this if you were honest about what it is. If you are not honest, they might accept it, but then your moral compass is questionable at best.

You’re on your own, man.

Leave it.

The keyboard has a cool custom effect now!