I washed my keyboard

[natalie_ca]

My computer keyboard was looking so gross! Stains from spills, crumbs, cat hair...

I routinely use one of those interdental tooth brushes to get the cat hair from around the bottom of the keys, but the keyboard still gets yucky looking.

Tonight I took the screws out of the back and removed the keyboard cover (the top with the keys on it) and put it into the dishwasher. I shook it well afterwards, tiping it this way and that to make sure the water had drained out and then dried the exterior with paper towels, and then put it back together with the base of the board. 

Looks great and works like a charm!

Anyone else wash their keyboard in such a fashion?

 

[swampwitch]

Hopefully, voiding the warranty isn't a problem.

 

[catsallaround]

JUST read about this under uses for a dishwasher.  They said to let it dry for a bit upside down.  I take vacuum mine often but it is not as bad as I don't use it around many cats much, they just try to jump in lap. 
 

 

[natalie_ca]

Keyboards to my knowledge aren`t covered under warranty. Besides since you are taking apart the keyboard and only washing the plastic cover with the keys, you can`t damage the actual computer component part of the keyboard.

 

[yayi]

I did not know one could do that. 

 

[natalie_ca]

I did not know one could do that. 

I had heard some years ago that you can put the keyboard into the dishwasher.  I wasn't exactly sure how to go about it, but earlier this year a friend of mine from another site who builds and programs computers mentioned that he had just cleaned his keyboard in the dishwasher. I asked him how to go about doing it, and he explained it to me. I've done it 4 times now with excellent results.

Today when I was putting it back together I accidentally changed the language to French, so when I was typing some of the keys were typing French characters. It was easy to fix. All I did was press the left ALT and the left SHIFT button together, then pressed shift question mark to convert it back to English.

 

[catsallaround]

One thing to remember is NO HEAT dry if in dishwasher.

When I first got laptop I left it went to grab a soda came back to a flipped screen-the entire pages were upside down....Leave it to JD to do THAT.
 

 

[natalie_ca]

One thing to remember is NO HEAT dry if in dishwasher.

I forgot to add to use the top rack of the dishwasher. I placed it keys down, on an angle so it was propped up by some of the verticle spokes without pressing in any of the keys.

I did leave it in for a bit of the heat dry, but not for the full cycle. Maybe 25% of the time. Not that it did any good, because of the angle I had the keyboard in, water pooled under the keys. Hence my tipping it in various ways and shaking it around to get the water out from under the keys.

 

[swampwitch]

Keyboards to my knowledge aren`t covered under warranty. 

Sure they are, until the warranty runs out (or you open them up).

 

[mrblanche]

I've cleaned "found" keyboards that way, before.  It usually works.  You might have to do some disassembly to get the last of the water out.