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year old smoothie spill on laptop, can my laptop be fixed?

hello! some background info/context:

almost an entire year ago now, i spilled a bit of smoothie on my laptop (dell inspiron 14 7445 2-in-1 is what it said when i checked the qr code) it wasnt much i dont think, and was on the top left corner of the keyboard. i turned it off almost immediately. at the time, i was at my grandparents, and nothing could be done until i got home a few weeks later. i told my dad about the issue, and he agreed to take it to get repaired

the spill happened in around october of 2025. it took him until late january 2026 to take it to bestbuy to get it looked at. due to a lot of personal family issues, there was nothing i couldve done to have gotten it looked at any sooner. however, the worker at best buy did not even look at it before saying that the motherboard was probably shot, and that it would cost over $700 to repair. so we left.

afterwards, my dad ended up opening it up and agreed that the motherboard looked dirty and likely couldnt be fixed. he was stingy about me looking at it myself, as ive never done a tech repair before.

fast forward many many months to today, where i finally was able to look inside the laptop myself. i noticed that the keys around where the spill was are no longer sticky, which they were INCREDIBLY sticky initially, which i cant tell if this is a good sign or not. i took the back off, and from what little bit of the motherboard i can see, it genuinely doesnt look dirty at all to me. i wanted to try to remove some more pieces so i could get a better look and see what all might need cleaning or if it just needed to be replaced, but couldnt get the battery out because of how hard the screws were to remove. im going to try again tomorrow morning with some help

the computer still hasnt been turned on since the initial spill, it was briefly charged before being taken in to bestbuy (legitimately for maybe like 10 minutes at the absolute most) but aside from that, nothing has been done

all this to say and with pictures provided, can this laptop be saved?

any help at all will be appreciated, thank you! :)

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Answer this question I have this problem too

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Hello,

I would suggest that you get some isopropyl alchohol 90%, get a toothbrush or a q-tip and get scrubbing. Why isopropyl alcohol 90%? It will safely work as a cleaner for your device. You can get it at a hardware store, or a pharmacy, if possible.

And yes, keys that aren't sticky are a good sign that the sweet stuff has been removed.

Good luck,

T

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Shiloh Newton will be eternally grateful.
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