I cleaned the keyboard!

The keys on this HP Pavilion laptop occasionally don't work, so I decided to clean the keyboard. That involved removing the keyboard, which wasn't difficult but it wasn't easy, either.

After some googling I found a service manual online and saw which screws had to come out. There was one on the back of each lid hinge. Once I removed them it was just a matter of popping off the plastic piece which has the speaker grill, one-touch buttons, and power button. And then there were four more screws to remove. Glad I got that set of mini-screwdrivers. When I finally freed up the keyboard I about tore the ribbon that connects it to the motherboard (or whatever it is the keyboard is connected to). So be gentle when you go to lift the keyboard from the computer. To loosen the ribbon I slid up a white plastic collar that holds it in place and the ribbon popped from on its own. Sweet. The keyboard was finally free of the rest of the computer!

I took some CleanSafe dust remover to it and blew the crap out of the keys...or at least a bunch of it, which appeared to be mostly cat hairs. Nice.

I put it all back together and here I am, testing the keyboard. It's performing better than it was before, but there are still some occasional hiccups. There are probably still some stray hairs in it, but I can live with its current performance. Maybe it was just a crappy keyboard to begin with.