Power Button Mashing, Ants' Mess and Laptop Guts

Ants.  I did not have anything against them, until they started infesting my computers.  Two PCs have died and another two are sick.  This story is about one of the sick PCs, an ASUS K95V.

The K95V started having problems turning on.  Initially, a few presses of the power button would turn the PC on.  As time passed, the number of power button presses increased and increased and increased.

When it started to take around five minutes of repeated pressing of the power button, I tried something crazy.  Without the power cable plugged in, I would flip the laptop upside down and shake it a few times.  This crazy idea actually worked and after the upside down shake, one press of the power button would turn the PC on.  I could plug the power cable back in after powering up.

The upside down shake technique only worked for a few months and it was back to repeated presses to power up the PC.  It reached the stage where I completely stopped shutting down, hibernating and putting the PC to sleep.  The power button was getting too annoying.

Then came the time.  I was fixing some stuff on the PC and accidentally shut down the PC.  After a few hours of power button mashing, the K95V still would not power up.  With nothing to lose I opened up the K95V.

Other than clumps of broken foam in a few areas, the insides looks fine.  I did not see any damaged components at all.

Checking the power switch PCB also did not reveal anything.  Everything looked fine.  So, I just cleaned up the ants' mess and reassembled the PC.  I tested powering up and shutting down the K95V several times and it appeared to be working fine.  Unfortunately, the next day, the K95V refused to power up again after shutting down for the night..

I disassembled and reassembled the K95V again.  I do not know why but it decided to power up again.  This time it will be left on  as there is still a problem with the power switch functionality somewhere.