Cleaning Inspiron 1720 Media Direct Buttons

Hey all,

With my recent acquisition of a Studio XPS 16, I am selling my Inspiron 1720 to a friend of mine (yep he's getting a good deal and I am throwing in 200 or 300 bucks worth of stuff to boot because he's a good guy), but I've noticed that my play and volume up media direct buttons tend to stick as if they've got some buildup behind them.

I hardly ever eat when using my laptop and I've never spilled anything on it so I'm guessing it's just normal buildup gunk but I'd rather take it apart and clean it to give it to him as clean as possible, if it's a relatively easy task.

Anyone have a good tutorial for me on how to do that? Or is this going to involve taking the whole darn thing apart?

 

Try pulling off the hinge cover and seeing if there's anything caught behind it?

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/ins1720/en/SM/hingecvr.htm#wp1180047

Otherwise, cleaning it with some alcohol will probably help loosen the buttons a bit.

 

The media buttons below the trackpad? For that, just take off the palmwrest (few screws and a bit of muscle) and then take the buttons off.

The button by the power button can be cleaned by popping off the little bezel above the keyboard. Just use a small keyboard. There aren't any electroncis on this bezel (at least on the 1520) and you could probably clean it by running it under some water ... but let it dry before putting it back in the laptop.

The rest of the laptop can be cleaned with a paper towel and some rubbing alcohol. Scrubbing on the palmwrest for a few minutes will restore the "new" feeling temporarily.