How to clean a dirty/sticky laptop?

I use alcohol based (not surface cleaning disinfectant based) cleaning wipes (not spray).

Do it with the computer turned off, then you can really go to town with the "severity" of your swipes across the keyboard.

paulyjustin said:

I had my dell xps 15 9550 since late 2016. I rarely use it by itself and have it hooked to 2 external monitors and an external keyboard. I noticed that when i finally am using it by itself with they keyboard without a monitor... my laptop is really dirty and sticky. Like the entire area to the left and below they keyboard is very sticky and stained.


What can i use on the laptop to clean it? Its literally sticking my palms when im using the keyboard. I did use some of those screen wipes on it but it doesn't seem to do much? Do i wipe it with alcohol? I do recall in computer shops, you see them have those sprays that they use for cleaning laptop but is that what is needed for this? If you touch the area to the left and right of the keyboard and below it... near the touchpad, it is extremely sticky... like imagine you had those mouse glue traps.


Do i buy products to clean it or go to a computer shop and ask if they could clean it? Like imagine you want to buy a used laptop on ebay and someone post a picture and you see like stains around the trackpad and near the keyboard to give you a picture of it. I don't know how it got like this as I always left it on a table and rarely even used the keyboard or anything.

Isopropyl alcohol. 99%

Turn it off, take the battery out, unplug from the wall. Then just use Isopropyl and a coffee filter for non screen areas, and something like a T-shirt for the screen.

You can get 99% Isopropyl from any pharmacy...it's cheap. You may have to ask the pharmacist for the "good stuff"... high percentage. Sometimes the best they have on the regular store shelves is like... 70%.




Make SURE to let it dry completely before turning it on or giving it ANY power.

i am using anti-bacterial wet wipes for cleaning laptop then
i clean screen with lcd cleaning wipes or eyeglasses cleaning wipes




i clean my phone with them too...

Several of my clients over the years have employed professional cleaning companies, and their method for cleaning Keyboards is very clever...

After the initial air blower to remove loose dirt from between he keys ...

They use a standard cloth and cleaning solution designed specifically for use on electronics devices, for the flat parts of the keyboard. They then lightly dampen the actual keyboard using a spray and lay a Chamois Leather cloth across the keyboard, they then take a medium stiff brush (ideal for this is a standard Clothes brush), and brush over the top of the Chamois cloth in the vertical and horizontal direction of the keys. which cleans the top and side surfaces of each key

What this does is gently force the cloth into the spaces between the keys thus cleaning and sanitising the keyboard.

You would be surprised what can be found in keyboards, on one occasion a user brought a keyboard for replacement as the Enter key would not move, Replaced the keyboard and decided to investigate the fault, removing the KeyCap for the enter key showed the fault immediately. Sat in the space under the key was a salted peanut, (both Halves still together), that prevented the key operation - how the peanut got there, and was intact we never discovered

Barman58 said:

You would be surprised what can be found in keyboards, on one occasion a user brought a keyboard for replacement as the Enter key would not move, Replaced the keyboard and decided to investigate the fault, removing the KeyCap for the enter key showed the fault immediately. Sat in the space under the key was a salted peanut, (both Halves still together), that prevented the key operation - how the peanut got there, and was intact we never discovered

i remember; i covered up my keyboard with stretch film before

i found dead insects in my desktop computer case at past