I spilled tea on my Asus laptop and now the keyboard is not working

[katherine666]

A week ago I spilled mint tea (no sugar) on my Asus X550c's keyboard. I wiped it out immediately and everything was just fine, I was actually playing a game so I kept playing until I noticed whenever I pressed 'W' the options menu would pop up. Then I pressed some other keys and everything was messed up, so I quit the game. My keyboard would type random characters, and that's when stupid me thought, oh, it's time to turn the thing off. And so I did. Removed the battery, wiped the tea out,let it dry for a couple of days. When I turned it on, the keyboard was dead. No biggie, I thought, on screen keyboard could work for now. And it did. Next day, I noticed a couple of the keys were working. Great, time to play some Guild Wars 2. Rebinding my skills to the working keys worked just fine. The next day, however, the keyboard was dead again. But this time I couldn't click on that damned 'ease of access' thing, so I could use the on screen keyboard, on the log in window. Nothing would happened when I clicked it, though I could still click on the shut down options and other stuff. I connected a usb keyboard but it still won't work, whatever I type on it it seems to think I pressed tab. My question is, what actually has been damaged by my dumbness? I don;t think it's only the keyboard, maybe some kind of connectors, I couldn't know, I don't know a thing about hardware stuff. What should I do before considering buying another laptop?

Edit: ok, I've tried everything. Usb keyboard doesn't work. Not even when the laptop's keyboard is disconnected. On screen keyboard and usb keyboard do only one thing, though. When I press 'S', it acts like I pressed 'tab'. Is is the motherboard?

 

[C12Friedman]

Here's what I would do if you brought the laptop to me for repair: Disassemble and steam clean it real good including the keyboard. Inspect all areas tea may have reached, then allow to dry for ~3 days and reassemble then test operation. It may be that contamination is inside the keyboard preventing even the attempt to disable it (it may show as being disabled while still being active to the system).
I wouldn't guarantee that would fix the laptop but it's where I would start. I've had some success with similar accidents - the worst being a Gaterade spill (where the owner did the exact wrong thing afterwards continually trying to power it on until it didn't respond at all) which required steam cleaning and some physical cleaning of one of the IC's but it came completely back to life without replacing anything.

Now, consider that most shops will not go to that extent, some may spray parts down with electrical cleaner and call it quits if that doesn't work, others may not even go that far. The Gaterade victim had been to a local shop (sprayed with electrical cleaner) and after that to Dell proper (no clue what they did but it was to the tune of ~$300 according to the owner) only to be told the laptop was beyond repair - I got it (likely out of desperation) after I told the owner that I would only charge for repair if I could get it running (seemed like a challenge to me). I actually over simplified my diagnostics a little bit but, well, I think you get the gist - research your repair shop.