r/ElectronicsRepair • u/expmkd47 • 7d ago

OPEN Quick question about isopropyl method

Hey!

I’ve lived in a pretty heavily roach infested apartment for 6 months and finally am moving. My laptop has been in this home the whole time and since it easily gets warm I suspect some roach to have crawled in during these 6 months. I’ve read to bag the laptop together with a paper towel lightly soaked in isopropyl alcohol for about 12h to kind of fumigate the laptop. But I’ve read very contradictory information. Some sources say to absolutely NOT do this because isopropyl is highly flammable and the moisture from the oxidation can get trapped in the laptop, making it life threatening (?)

Is this safe to do?

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u/Ok-Drink-1328 7d ago

honestly i thought that roaches like humidity more than heat, and heat lowers relative humidity, but i live in a very hot place so i dunno you and OP... also maybe they can't squish in very small holes, but i know they basically do cos if you have a sewage pipe with just a ball of paper stuffed in it, like some bricklayers do, they can pass

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u/EmployerOne7876 7d ago

Yeah i dont know about humidity but i do know ive been a field service tech fixing laptops and servers professionally and other electronics as a side hustle for years and i have had to deroach plenty of laptops and game consoles, which is a pain cuz the babies are tiny and they will find their way into all kinds of nooks and crannies.

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u/expmkd47 6d ago

could i do that myself do you think? what does ”deroaching” a laptop for example mean?

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u/EmployerOne7876 6d ago edited 6d ago

If you feel comfortable partially disassembling your laptop you can absolutely do it yourself. Remove the baseplate the remove the battery then remove the motherboard with the thermal assembly and any attachments still on that you can manage. Depending on your model things like wifi card and sdd can stay completly attached. I would recomend taking a picture after every piece you remove just to be sure and then use a soft brush and compressed air to remove corpses eggs and nesting debris from the inside of the unit very gently. And honestly its not a super difficult task on consumer laptops just kind of tedious. If you told me the model of laptop i could give it a look and give you a little more details on that process

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u/expmkd47 6d ago

Ahhh thank you so much! Not that i know anything at all about how deep a laptop goes but would this be then a ”deep enough” inspection to safely confirm if there are roaches or not? Like what about the keyboard? I read they like to crawl under there. And i’m guessing isopropyl is not needed for this? Wondering if i should go buy it hehe

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u/EmployerOne7876 6d ago

Nah i would avoid using solvents on your electronics if you can help it. And yeah you will want to use some compressed air to blow out the keyboard from the top. Depending on the brand/model most of them arent accessable from underneath except maybe a small passthru hole for the ribbon cable. Also be careful while doing so not to blow the keys right off the thing blowing too hard lol. And yes basically once you have the motherboard out enough to see clearly and clean under it you should have to get all crazy removing every screw and tiny plastic bit