Dell N7110 keyboard craziness

A while back, the keyboard on my N7110 started going nuts. I had replaced the original with a backlit one from China years ago. I removed the keyboard and it had the distinct smell of coffee. Turns out my wife spilled some on it a while back, and never said anything.


I attempted to clean the keyboard as best I could, but got no results. The same characters, "ruweq", would spam as soon as I started to close the hinge on the ribbon. Then a "43poi" might or might not show up, followed by a steady stream of "i"s.

Anyway, I ordered the same keyboard, and everything was fine. New keyboard worked for a few weeks, then suddenly, the same issues. I grilled the wife, but she swears she hasn't spilled anything. It seems the problem is now with the board. I tried cleaning the connection with alcohol, but no dice.

Here's where things start getting interesting.

For no reason at all, I dug up the old, coffee spilled keyboard and plugged it in. It worked! ...Well, it worked for about 5 minutes, then it started going nuts again. Plugged in the new one, same deal. So now, neither of them work.


Any advice on how I might fix this? Any idea why the old one would suddenly work for a few minutes? Any help at all would be appreciated.

Thanks!

-David