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celticbhoy
July 29th, 2009, 12:05 AM
I need some advice before opening up my daughters laptop. It is a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo L7300, and a few of the keys have suddenly stopped working. the keys are ` w b n and left arrow. I am guessing that they share a common link, is there anything I should specifically be looking for when I open the case ?

magmon
July 29th, 2009, 12:15 AM
How have the keys stopped working? Can you no longer push them, or do they simply not respond?

celticbhoy
July 29th, 2009, 12:17 AM
No response. I took one off and checked out the rubber membrane, but it seemed ok, and bounced up and down as you would expect.

Calmor
July 29th, 2009, 12:20 AM
No response. I took one off and checked out the rubber membrane, but it seemed ok, and bounced up and down as you would expect.

Before you rip it apart, did you check the key mapping to make sure they weren't assigned to something else?

I've seen stranger things.

If you boot with a LiveCD and they still don't work, then you have definitely a hardware problem.

My girlfriend recently spilled some liquid into hers and it caused all kinds of issues, eBay provided a $15 (new) replacement keyboard... cleaning it didn't seem to work. Good luck!

celticbhoy
July 29th, 2009, 12:21 AM
No key mapping, and she assures me there have been no spills or bangs and bumps (but you know kids).

Calmor
July 29th, 2009, 12:47 AM
No key mapping, and she assures me there have been no spills or bangs and bumps (but you know kids).

Yes... I remember pulling the same "I don't know how that happened!" act as a kid. In that case, though, unfortunately I'm of no help... but to say I wasn't successful in cleaning a Dell laptop keyboard. I tried to clean the rubber pads as well as completely rinsing the liquid (in this case, wine) out of the keyboard - neither helped nor hurt.

This one was doing weirdness in that pressing W would give you a capital W and then stick Caps Lock on, and Y, 5, 6, and 7 wouldn't work at all.

It seemed as though one of the lines to the keyboard's internal controller (or the controller itself) was damaged by the spill. If that's your case as well, I'd say that replacement of the keyboard is the easiest method. =

Wish I could be of more assistance, and again, good luck in your quest!

DeadSuperHero
July 29th, 2009, 01:19 AM
I would recommend just checking the key mapping, just in case.