Minor Spillage.

So, last night whilst I as doing some homework, a small dollop of milkshake ended up on my laptop (beside where the built in mouse is) and now I'm worried something will happen.

A little bit of the milkshake got under the right mouse button, so I immediately did what I was recommended to do by the almighty gods of the internet, and turned it right off.

Now, posting this this morning, it seems fine. There was a small problem when I first booted it up, where it loaded my desktop but refused to load anything else (no Battery Indicator, Volume Indicator, etc) nor would it select desktop options when I hovered over them. The fan was also running quite 'heavily'.
That was fixed with a reset, however.

Now, I'm not sure if everything's fine. I'm going to assume that the milkshake did NOT get further into the electronics, as my right mouse button is a bit sticky and hard to press, which would make sense if the milkshake dried round about it.

What do you guys think? Should I be fine apart from a hindered right mouse button?

 

Hmm, honestly if it was me I wouldn't hazard the chance. You need to have it looked at by a professional who can go in and clean it up. It's not about your right-click button, it's about what if it did leak farther and one day you leave your laptop running and it sparks up. Or if it reaches the motherboard somehow and fries the circuits. Then again, if you gave it enough time to dry up it might have stopped there. It's your choice, I would have it checked out anyway.

 

Stuff like that is rarely an actual problem.

If you feel you must clean it but don't feel like taking it in I would drip some rubbing alcohol there and click that mouse button some to loosen it up. That will disperse it out some and alcohol has virtually no risk for computer parts.

But to get it out entirely would require disassembly, and on a notebook computer you can basically forget about that. To get it compact enough most of them are built in such a way that the manufacturer is the only that should really try taking it apart.

 

Mixt's post is basically what I was going to say, but

Make sure it's isopropyl alcohol. Most of your rubbing alcohols will be this way (should say it on the container), but isopropyl alcohol is unique in that it won't leave any residue.

And for the record, this won't work on laptops and for something thick like milkshake, but if you ever drop like... an iPod or something in water, put it in a bag of rice right away. Just a good thing to know.

 

Unfortunately, that's kind of impossible. I'd have to tell my mother about it, and she doesn't know the meaning of "accidents happen". And the nearest place I can think of to get it checked aren't all that reliable anyway.

Again, buying something like that would be pretty hard for me to do because of my mother. I have no intentions of telling her, and she'll get suspicious if I come home with rubbing alcohol.

Anyway, thanks for your help guys. I've left my laptop off for two days so I'm hoping for the best today. This can be locked now.