Some of my friends Laptop Keys stopped working

[clematised]

Hello all you tech friends,


My friend has a Dell laptop that belonged to her late husband and I am trying to teach her the basics.
Recently her grandaughter had used it, and next time my friend used it some of the keys no longer work.
The girl says she has not spilt anything on it.
The Backspace, Spacebar, and Enter Keys seem to be the problem.
Shaken it and vaccumed it to remove dust ect., but still not working.
Will this be expensive to repair or is there a simple solution that I have not thought of.
It is out of warranty too.
Currently its with her daughter to put vitals onto memory stick just in case.

Any suggestion will be gratefully appreciated.

Edna

[Somerset Sal]

This happened to a laptop belonging to a charity I did some voluntary work for. Unfortunately, the laptop was junked - but then it was very old and probably not worth repairing. It might be worth getting a quote from someone like PC world, to see if it can be repaired - if it costs too much you don't have to go ahead with the work.

Very sensible to back up the important stuff!

Good luck!

[WendyPusey]

My son, who works in IT, says that you should leave it for a while to dry out.

Your grandaughter says she did not spill anything, but keys usually only stick if they get wet and sticky!!! Needs only to be a dribble of liquid and it will make them stick until they have dried.

[clematised]

Thank you both for your replies.
It has been a couple of weeks since the keys last worked so should be dry if anything had been spilled.
It is a fairly new laptop with Vista but more than a year old but not quite sure how old so not quite ready for the bin if anything can be done with it.

Edna

[Grimsqueaker]

buy a usb keyboard and use that instead !!

[Guest]

I was going to suggest that, but thought she would think I'm mad , I actually bought a keyboard for my laptop as I have it on a special stand and its not viable to use the built in one .
Got a pretty pink one and a mouse to match as I cant get on with the silly touch thingy ?

[Margaret N]

Hi Val,

Has this laptop got a lock on it? When you click on the 'Football' in windows vista you get an option to lock it. Worth a try.

The only reason I have not got a laptop as the size of the keyboard, I would need to use my present one and plug it in.

[Darksecretz]

what you could do is what we did,

My daughter spilt some pure OJ on my keybord on my laptop, the keys were very sticky and some just refused to work, we eventually found a keyboard on ebay and then OH replaced it for me, (looked on you tube how to do it) though he has built many desktop puters he hasnt really played about with laptops. after 15 mins of fiddling about I had a laptop that was working A1 and back to normal, ( I have kept my original keybord for spares!)

so bear this in mind :smilee:

[clematised]

I have a spare one so when she gets it back I will try it out

Thank you all for your suggestions and replies

Edna

[Dubonnet lady]

I can't get on with laptop keyboards except in an emergency - but I bought a small keyboard (Micro keyboard) with a USB connection (no side bit with all the figures on) from Maplins. It has a stand so it's sloping - so it's more like a typewriter keyboard and the figures are on the top row - enough for most people anyway - unless you're doing a lot of accounts stuff I suppose and it was'nt expensive.