I have cleaned assorted electronics using rubbing alcohol and qtips/cotton swabs.  Try not to leave cotton traces behind.
I suspect that the mb cpu got fried when the soda hit it if it were powered on at the time.  I think references to washing keyboards in a dishwasher refer to desktop keyboards, I don't know of any references to laptop keyboards, but if it's broken, you can't break it more...  More than likely, the memory, harddrive, optical drive, battery and some other parts (maybe cpu) may be salvagable, but the price of a replacement mb probably makes the repair not cost effective.
Paul Hachmeyer 


 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Vernon Plumlee" Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 10:42 AM
Subject: [PCBUILD] Cleaning the innards, Compaq Providian


Anybody know what the best cleaning solution is to clean the innards of a
notebook? A friend of mine spilled soda into his laptop and is amazed it
doesn't work anymore?!? I took it apart and now want to clean it up and then
see what happens. So, I need to know the best cleaner to use. Anybody.
TIA,
Vern Plumlee

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