Laptop Keyboard Replacement Brisbane: Dead Keys, Spills and Repeating Keys

A laptop keyboard is used more than any other part of the machine and it sits directly under every crumb and coffee cup. Most keyboard faults are either a setting, dirt under a key, or a keyboard that has worn out or been damaged by liquid. The pattern of what has stopped working tells you which.

Work out what kind of fault it is

• One or two keys are dead or sticky. Usually dirt or dried liquid under those keys, or a worn key.
• A whole group of keys died at once. A broken line inside the keyboard or in its ribbon cable. The keys are often scattered across the keyboard rather than next to each other.
• Keys repeat or type by themselves. A short circuit inside the keyboard, most often after liquid.
• Nothing works at all. The ribbon cable, its connector, or a fault on the motherboard.

Checks to try first

• Restart the laptop.
• Plug in a USB keyboard. If that types normally, the laptop itself is fine and the built-in keyboard has a hardware fault.
• Test before Windows starts. Switch on and tap the key that opens the setup screen, usually F2, Delete or Esc. If the keyboard does not work there either, it is hardware, not a Windows problem.
• Check the keyboard settings. In Windows, look under Accessibility, then Keyboard. Filter Keys and Sticky Keys both make a healthy keyboard seem broken. Wrong characters appearing usually means the wrong language layout is selected.
• Clean it. Switch off, hold the laptop at an angle and use short bursts of compressed air under the keys.
• Do not lever the key caps off. The clips under them are tiny and break easily, and a key that will not go back on is a new fault.

If liquid was involved, switch the laptop off and read what to do after a spill first. The keyboard is the least of the worries: the liquid has usually reached the board underneath.

Why a few dead keys can mean a whole keyboard

Under the keys is a set of thin plastic sheets with the wiring printed on them. When a printed line cracks or corrodes there is no practical way to repair that one line, so the keyboard is replaced as a unit.

How big a job that is depends on the laptop. On some models the keyboard is a separate part held in by screws and clips. On many current laptops it is fixed permanently into the top half of the case, and on a MacBook it is part of the top case. Those are replaced by stripping the laptop down, and sometimes by replacing the top case with the keyboard in it.

What keyboard replacement involves

We first confirm that the keyboard is the fault, and not its cable, connector or the board. Then we fit the correct keyboard for your exact model, including the right layout and the backlit version if yours has one, and test every key and the backlight before it goes back to you.

What to tell us

• The make and exact model
• Which keys are affected, and whether they failed together
• Whether anything was spilled, even a while ago
• Whether a USB keyboard works normally

See everything else we fix on our laptop repair Brisbane page, including MacBook repair.