Bill Roper's Journal

Gretchen's Dell laptop (which Julie spends most of her time using) had a glass of dilute Gatorade spilled on it this morning. I was out at the time with Gretchen when Julie discovered that the computer would not boot up. Much to my surprise, she managed to figure out how to run diagnostics on it. When I got home, I discovered that the diagnostics were just fine.

But the computer wouldn't boot. Apparently, *something* had put a lot of crud into the BIOS settings. After a bit of Google-fu, I managed to find the correct settings and boot the laptop.

Into the Bitlocker prompt. Off to the Microsoft website on my phone to recover the unlock key.

And the computer finally booted up.

Unfortunately, the keyboard is worse for the wear. Getting keys to register requires a rather firm touch. This is possibly partly due to wear, but certainly partly due to Gatorade.

I have ordered a OEM replacement keyboard (because this is not something where saving $20 is really worthwhile) and will install it when it arrives. The good news is that the Internet instructions suggest this could be the easiest laptop keyboard install in history.

And then we'll see how everything works.

Ah, well. It could have been *much* worse.