Bizarre Laptop Symptoms

[milon]

So my wife's Win7 laptop just developed a strange problem last night, and I have no idea how to begin diagnosing it. I'm hoping someone here can point me in the right direction. The laptop is an IBM ThinkPad Z60t (and a quick google for keyboards makes me think it's a Lenovo, but I'm not certain). The laptop was off, and my wife accidentally spilled coffee on the laptop keyboard. She cleaned it up very carefully using paper towels and Q-tips. It looked fine, so she turned it on to watch Netflix. After watching a show, she left the laptop to do something else. Normally, the laptop would go into Hibernate mode after a couple hours. This morning, it was still on and displaying the Netflix screen. It didn't go into Hibernate. Odd. This is where I began checking it out, and this is what I found:

WORKING:
All letters, numbers, symbols, spaces
left & right CTRL, SHIFT, ALT
Arrow keys, ENTER, Backspace, Tab, Caps, ESC
Double-click to open something from Explorer
Left-click on the start menu button (opens the start menu)

NOT WORKING
Right click buttons (the keyboard has 2 of them), and the context menu keyboard button
WIN key (does nothing)
WIN+D - This one's fun. It opens the Run dialog (as if I had pressed WIN+R), Windows Explorer (at My Computer, oddly enough), and Ease of Access Center. And makes the laptop beep 3 times.
WIN+R - Opens the Run dialog and types 'qq' (no quotes) into it, opens Windows Explorer at My Computer, and opens Ease of Access Center, makes the computer beep 3 times.
PGUP (seems to act as F11 and F12 since it made Chrome go full-screen and open the developer window)
PGDN (does nothing?)
Left click on the desktop or in the start menu (is interpreted as a right click)
Explorer.exe - Let me explain. Occasionally, and seemingly after trying to use right-click, Windows doesn't "highlight" the start button when I mouse over it. It also stops responding to mouse clicks entirely. I can fix it if I restart explorer (CTRL+ALT+DEL >> Task Manager >> Stop Explorer, then Run Task Explorer.exe, all using the keyboard), so I'm led to believe that Explorer is the culprit in some way.

These issues are really bizarre and confusing. I took the laptop apart and cleaned the keyboard out with compressed air and paper towel. I did not remove and check under individual keys, but I found no evidence at all of coffee in the keys or in the internals. I have not yet tried attaching an external mouse. Restarting the computer has had no effect on the issues. Also, while typing this post (from the laptop), the mouse cursor has begun drifting to the left at a rate of about 4 pixels per second. It has a little joystick "nub" in the center of the keyboard, and I can halt the drift by applying slight pressure to the right, but it's a new issue so I'm mentioning it too. (I can still control it normally through the touchpad and the joystick nub, FYI.)

The symptoms sound a little like hardware (with the messed up keyboard), and a little like software (restarting Explorer fixes things, mouse issues only in certain parts of Windows, not hibernating on its own). Any ideas what's wrong, what to try, etc? I'll try the external mouse when I can.

EDIT - The mouse is now drifting downwards 1 pixel for every 2-7 pixels it drifts left. I can still halt it easily with slight pressure on the joystick.

EDIT 2 - Tried with an external USB mouse. It has the exact same function as the touchpad, etc. Left click on desktop = right click. Left click on task bar = left click. Left click on start menu = left click. Left click in start menu = right click.

EDIT 3 - ... Umm. Now I'm confused. I did one more test after typing the above, and now left/right clicks are working properly everywhere. Virus/malware/etc activity is highly unlikely as we have MSE up to date, we don't visit sketchy sites, don't install unknown software, etc.

[Forever Winter]

I don't think that just cleaning with paper towels and q-tips is enougth. I am really no expert at such things, but demontage the ThinkPad, examine every part carefully and clean it with distilled water and
isopropyl, than let the parts dry serveral days may be more appropiate. Also note, that even if you can't see any remaining coffee with your eyes, there may still some that isn't visible with the naked eye.

http://thinkwiki.de/Erste_Hilfe_bei_Fl% ... h%C3%A4den deals with such, but it is in german and because I don't know from where you are, I don't know if it is of any use for you.
Maybe thinkwiki.org has a similar article, but I don't know.

[rembrandt]

Boot the PC in safe mode. Does it still happen then?
If it doesn't (=everything works normal), you probably have a program running in the background that catches some interrupts (for instance to use hotkeys) but doesn't work properly any more.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... =windows-7

[milon]

After more tinkering (and consulting my network-admin brother), I'm pretty convinced it's a hardware issue. I'll try a safe mode boot just in case, and report anything interesting/relevant.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Most of the symptoms sound like a shorted keyboard. Clean the keyboard, remove all the moisture and try again...

(Definitely time to check the keyboard for liquids if you get symptoms of the wrong characters being entered, such as the letter P key being a zero instead.)

[tomleem]

There is also a forum for ThinkPad's. http://forum.thinkpads.com/ They could also be a resource for you too. Perhaps someone could suggest a section for ReactOS?