My latest project is replacing the keyboard on my old Toshiba Satellite laptop. Last January I spilled tea on it. It seemed OK at first, but within a minute or so, issues began to show up such as numbers and letters inserting themselves randomly as I was typing. Finally it ended up that anytime something was open that you’d type in (such as a Word document or an email), it would keep inserting 8s. I had ordered a new laptop that was due to arrive in two days and I have a spare Netbook I could use in the meantime, so I put the Toshiba away until I had time to look at it further.
The next time I turned it on, there were some odd screens showing up but it did eventually start up and I was able to save some documents off it to an external hard drive using an external USB keyboard. My hope was that the problems were related to keyboard keys being stuck and not to some other issue. The fact that once it eventually started up it was OK, other than inserting 8s into documents or emails or fields on internet pages, made me hopeful it did not have a bigger problem.
Finally I got back to it the other day. There are tons of YouTube videos and written tutorials on the internet
that explain how to replace keyboards, so I found a suitable one for my Toshiba and was easily able to remove the keyboard. I think if you knew what you were doing, you could get it off in under a minute. It took me less than 10 and I was being very careful not to break anything.
First I took the “8” key off to see if it was sticky or anything underneath, and was amazed at all the cat hair and fuzz that was under the key. I took a few more keys off to see if it would be feasible to clean them all. Unfortunately once I took them off, I couldn’t get them to stay back on, so since keyboards are cheap enough, I ordered a new one.
This was Wednesday evening, and the new keyboard arrived on Friday! Gotta love Amazon Prime and the free two-day shipping. Here we are, ready to start.
The next time I turned it on, there were some odd screens showing up but it did eventually start up and I was able to save some documents off it to an external hard drive using an external USB keyboard. My hope was that the problems were related to keyboard keys being stuck and not to some other issue. The fact that once it eventually started up it was OK, other than inserting 8s into documents or emails or fields on internet pages, made me hopeful it did not have a bigger problem.
Finally I got back to it the other day. There are tons of YouTube videos and written tutorials on the internet
that explain how to replace keyboards, so I found a suitable one for my Toshiba and was easily able to remove the keyboard. I think if you knew what you were doing, you could get it off in under a minute. It took me less than 10 and I was being very careful not to break anything.
First I took the “8” key off to see if it was sticky or anything underneath, and was amazed at all the cat hair and fuzz that was under the key. I took a few more keys off to see if it would be feasible to clean them all. Unfortunately once I took them off, I couldn’t get them to stay back on, so since keyboards are cheap enough, I ordered a new one.
This was Wednesday evening, and the new keyboard arrived on Friday! Gotta love Amazon Prime and the free two-day shipping. Here we are, ready to start.
Attaching the ribbon to the laptop turned out to be easy, but the new keyboard was a little harder to fit in than the one I took out. I was very careful, and finally I got the little metal "tabs" where they needed to be.
Looking good! I found where I had put the tiny little screws for safe keeping, and fastened them back in. I was surprised the other day to find we had a small screwdriver that was the right size. You never know what you will find in your toolbox. I decided to hold off putting the one last plastic strip back on until I knew if the keyboard was going to work. It was hard to get off and I'd hate to break it. But there was no reason to worry! For a $15 on a keyboard and maybe 20 minutes of work, the Toshiba is back in action!
Go Bears! The next part of the plan is to reformat the laptop and install Linux. I want to attempt to learn to code, and to write a simple game. But that is for another day.