Z61t- bug crawled out of my keyboard....

So sorry about the grossness of this post!

My Z61t motherboard died a few months ago (humidity damage- no reason to try to repair), and since then it has been stored in an unsealed box in a neoprene sleeve. I took at look at the machine yesterday, and upon opening the lid I saw a small moth worm crawl out of the far left side of the keyboard!!

I was going to get a used motherboard and give it to my bro to put in and play with (so no real future plans for the machine) and I wanted to try to save the 500 gb hard drive (7200rpm hdd- full) inside to place in an enclosure.

But......instead.....(and I blame too much Car Talk) i let my irrational fear of bugs get to me and I put the computer in freezer bags and placed it in a big freezer we have in the basement, to try to kill the bugs.

Question: did I just ruin that hard drive? What else did i ruin? How does one get rid of a keyboard infestation? lol

 

Freezing water might be your biggest risk of damaging the computer. Depending on how humid/worm-infested it is. Also, freezing the worms does not get rid of them, though they end up dead they do so in the computer - frozen to something?
Also, I hope you removed the battery before putting it in the freezer. Condensation enables currents to do damage.

I am no expert on this and have no experience with it, but I am interested in how your experiment goes! Please be back with details, maybe even take pictures!

 

Hard drives are fairly tolerant of extreme temperatures when they are not running. The rated temperature range is nomailly included in the HDD specs. However, the real test is whether it works when back at room temperature.

As for your bug "infestation": What makes you think that there are more than your have already seen? If you really want to clean things then a good bath and scrub may be the best route (strip down to the various components and don't give the HDD a bath). Allow everything to dry in a warm dry place before reassembly.

As for bug problems, some 17-18 years ago I watched a small ant make its way across my notebook screen on the inside. My initial reaction was to think of squashing it, but realised that it would leave a permanent mark inside the screen, so I left it to continue on its travels and never saw it again.

John

 

HDD should be fine, I have heard of freezing already failing hard drives to try and get the last bit of information off of them.

 

Freezing a HDD doesn't kill it (unless it is being used while freezing), but it can actually revive your data ( here). Your bug "infestation" might be really serious, but you could take apart the computer (dissembly instructions for the predecessor Z60m here) and take the CPU, LCD, HDD, etc away and trash/clean the useless parts that might be infested (I had a Spider nest in motherboard of a Dell).

 

Ugh I hate insects...you just got me paranoid... *scurries to open up my Z61ts*

How on earth do worms get inside a notebook anyway?

 

Through a worm hole......

 

Best post of the day!

 

I don't recommend putting it in the freezer because water vapor could condensate on the surfaces of it's components. Or if you do, put some silica gel packets in the bag with the computer to take the moisture out of the air.

What you need is co2, or halon, or nitrogen to replace the oxygen in the computer. Although, you must let it gasses out because the gasses will make the hard drive head rider higher or lower over the platter until they dissipate. Perhaps some kind of bug trap would lure them out with a scent.

 

Perhaps Norton or McAffee will do the trick?

 

Are you sure it was a worm and not a trojan?!

 

Geez! I've seen many dirty notebooks and desktops from inside but never bugs

As other posters said before, you better remove the parts you want to keep using the Z61T's HMM from here. I think things like the hard drive (plus caddy, screws and hard drive cover) can be re-used. With a little bit of luck the humidity did not damaged the keyboard. Also the heatsink should be ok, (not sure about the fan itself). Palmrest and plastics in general should be ok as well.

Good luck killing the bugs!

 

Just another reason to keep the laptop cool and free of food residues. Bugs like warmth and food and moisture. I have seen telephone set infested with baby roaches.

 

just my luck that freezing is sometimes used to revive hard drives - neat! Thanks so much for the advice (and jokes) everyone!

Well- I left the machine in the freezer overnight that night. I figured I could then use compressed air to blow out any frozen dead bug debris......but nothing came out. I let the computer defrost (there wasn't as much excess moisture as I expected) and let it air dry (its also been quite dry here).

However, I am a novice- so I do not trust myself to open up the machine- I usually leave that sort of thing to my brother- who I wont see until christmas. I think my school IT office will be able to retrieve the hard drive for me when I go back in a couple of weeks- The computer will be in storage in a computer bag with those little bags of silicone until then. To be continued.....

 

it must smell awful Is it still in warranty? If so, save the exciting task for the depot tech with a polite forewarning

 

lol @ cobrien

well done

 

It takes only one screw to be removed (previous battery removal). It's really dead easy if you follow page #58 of the link I posted above.