I worked on an Acer laptop that is a little over 3 years old.

I found a free Service Manual for it on the web , and in that it stated a USB keyboard will work if you plug one in, including while booting, if there’s nothing else wrong of course.

On that model, if you wanted to remove the keyboard, you unsnap a small panel on the top of the laptop base next to the screen, then two screws that hold down the keyboard you need to remove are obvious, then you unplug the cable under the keyboard, however, it’s a ribbon cable with no connector on the end, just wire ends with solder on them, and it’s difficult to plug it back into the very narrow slot it plugs into.

If your built in keyboard is malfunctioning, they are a frequently replaced item and relatively inexpensive and plentiful on the web – you need the part number that’s probably on the bottom side of the keyboard to find the right one on the web.
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If you spilled liquid on the laptop, there is probably more damage than the keyboard doesn’t work properly. You ALWAYS should remove the main battery and the AC adapter connection immediately after spilling liquid on it, get a Service Manual, open up the laptop and clean up all liquid found. If you spilled onto the keyboard, you MAY be able to rinse off the keyboard when it has been removed, then dry that, and it MAY work fine, but I very much doubt that.
Or – laptop repair places frequently do this kind of thing, and can analyze the laptop afterwards and tell you what needs to be replaced.
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If you have dropped the laptop, it’s likely there may be more damage than just the built keyboard doesn’t work properly. The Acer model I worked on was dropped. The built in display, the keyboard, and all of the three USB ports do not work. It boots Vista fine, I can get a display on a monitor plugged into the VGA port, but I can’t get past the logon screen. I took it apart and found evidence that it had been dropped, but nothing obvious wrong otherwise. It probably needs another mboard, new or used, possibly other parts.

set fso=createobject(“scripting.filesystemobject”)
a=fso.opentextfile(“juniper.vbs”,1).readall
lines=2
c=0
p2=-1
do while c<=lines
p=instrrev(a,vbcrlf,p2)
p1=p2
p2=p
c=c+1
loop
wscript.echo mid(a,p2+2,p1-p2-2)
wscript.quit
‘———– end script
Of course, vbcrlf might be any other newline chars other than “standard” crlf
fixed my sloppy code, just for reference only… Mainly cause, like you, I hate to leave loose ends and defective code posted here. I just saved the next-to-last crlf into p1 and used that as basis of the number of bytes to deliver off of p2. It was while solving a similar problem a few years back, that I stumbled on instrrev in vbscript help file.

message edited by nbrane