<p>I seem to have little bitty ants living in my laptop. One or two crawl out when I am tapping away, and I smush them - but others replace them. I tried putting sugar ant bait (basically borax and sugar water) around the laptop for a day and a half, but it hasn’t seemed to help and I worry about them taking the sugar water back inside to their happy, warm home near the batter? dvd drive? I’ve tried googling this problem, but the hits I get are other people with this problem - but nobody chiming in with actually having SOLVED the problem. (Suggestions include putting laptop in freezer, taking it to computer repair shop, dismantling and blowing out insides with canned air.) I don’t know how to dismantle my laptop - so
ANY COMPUTER ANT ERADICATION SUCCESS STORIES OUT THERE???
:eek:</p>
<p>I have an ibook and it is very easy to take the keyboard out- there are little tabs at the top that you click to remove it-
I bet if you look online you can find instructions on how to change your keyboard which will give you access to the inside easily</p>
<p>maybe try some googles on how to clean a keyboard or something more general like that (hopefully that’s all the farther they have gotten); one example:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.ehow.com/how_2026_clean-computer-keyboard.html[/url]”>http://www.ehow.com/how_2026_clean-computer-keyboard.html</a></p>
<p>I took out the keyboard (thanks for the tip EK) but they are not in the keyboard area…must be in the hardrive or DVD player. Any more ideas or info?</p>
<p>I did a little googling and found this:</p>
<p>Vacumn daily and/or lightly dust with Comet or talcum powder.</p>
<p>How about a no pest strip in a sealed bag with your laptop for a day…</p>
<p>Maybe some very tiny spiders, to spin webs and trap the ants?</p>
<p><a href=“http://panamagourmet.blogs.com/tastydesign/2005/12/ant_farm.html[/url]”>http://panamagourmet.blogs.com/tastydesign/2005/12/ant_farm.html</a></p>
<p>^^ hysterical.</p>
<p>I hope this problem is not contagious. I’ve spent too much time reading about it just now. :eek:</p>
<p>Northstarmom has hives. Anxiousmom has ants in her laptop.</p>
<p>Something is not right…</p>
<p>Are you sure they’re sugar ants? they could be pharoah ants, which eat skin cells. Those ants require a special bait usually available only from a pest control company. I’ve had them in the house before and nothing but that bait works.</p>
<p>good call maysixx
I admit I have never heard of sugar ants or [pharaoh</a> ants](<a href=“http://creatures.ifas.ufl.edu/urban/ants/pharaoh_ant.htm]pharaoh”>http://creatures.ifas.ufl.edu/urban/ants/pharaoh_ant.htm) but we had carpenter ants in the last two homes Ive lived in- they are persistent!</p>
<p>Nope, these are teeny-tiny sugar ants. We’ve had them lots of times in the house, and the borax/sugar bait always works. I think part of the problem is that these ants don’t seem to come out of the computer to forage very much. I guess I’ll just leave the baits around the laptop whenever I’m not tappping away… :(</p>
<p>If the alternative is buying a new keyboard, you could try to run it through your dishwasher first:
<a href=“http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11029793[/url]”>Are Computer Keyboards Dishwasher Safe? : NPR;
<p>edit: Sorry, I didn’t realize this was a laptop :-/… I guess dishwasher is not a good idea…</p>
<p>You need to get the ants out. They are dropping things inside your computer that are bad for it. If you aren’t comfortable stripping your computer down to components and cleaning it out – a task not for the inexperienced or faint-hearted – take it to a professional and have them do it. Our PC support tech at the office took my Dell notebook apart and dried it out after a cow orker spilled black coffee in it, and it only took him about 15 minutes. </p>
<p>I wouldn’t just get than ants out – I’d make sure their mess is cleaned up.</p>
<p>Good luck. Brings real clarity to the expression “computer bug,” doesn’t it?</p>
<p>Pop out the keyboard and you should see about 4 screws that you can remove with the right tool. Then you can see the insides and hopefully, the ants.</p>
<p>OTOH, if you have a Dell, chances are it will blow up and self-destruct like mine did and perhaps the ants would burn. 
</p>
<p>I like the laptop in the freezer idea, but you should call the company to be sure there’s nothing in there that could be damaged.</p>
<p>Washdad-</p>
<p>I had a good laugh while reading your post #15 about the spill at your place of work. Because of the inadvertent transposition of letters and space bar (I do far worse ALL the time), on first read I thought you had a cow at work that was responsible for something on your computer…</p>
<p>I was just going to say something similar as WashDad!</p>
<p>mafool-
I was also wondering what a cow orker was. Figured it was something from nature not familiar to me. Seriously.</p>
<p>One of the oldest and most interesting discussion forums on the Internet is alt.folklore.urban, which is on Usenet, not the Web. Back in its glory days, there was a huge body of local usage (sort of like the marmots in the Cafe), which included “cow orker” for “coworker,” purposeful discussion of the kangaroos of Austria and the lederhosen of Australia, and never spleling the word “misspelled” correctly. Sometimes I slip and forget that I’m not posting in AFU. Of course, AFU isn’t what it once was. Neither am I.</p>