My laptop is no longer my own. A nefarious intelligence has taken control, and there’s nothing I’ve been able to do. Linux has been no protection. Going offline has been no help. The sentience masterminding the takeover has been relentlous.
So far I’ve not been stopped from working. It’s been a symbiotic relationship. I fear however an imminent shutdown, a short circuit.
The intelligence I speak of is not some evil cracker from Eastern Europe. Nor some software from Redmond. It’s a horde of black ants who’ve decided to live inside my laptop.
Our house has been invaded by these ants for the first time this year. The African ant is large, and rarely comes inside. The Argentine ant, until now the most common ant in our household, only enters in summer, when the drought forces them out to find water. However, a new kind of ant is now taking over the house in winter, nesting under my TV aerial, inside a CD case, and now inside my laptop.
I was unaware of the full extent of the invasion until I arrived in Johannesburg. I’d flown up with my laptop on Wednesday afternoon, and on Saturday morning settled down to do some work. I’d noticed the odd ant surfacing, and realised I had a problem, but assumed it was the odd straggler. I left a glass of water next the laptop while I went away for 5 minutes. Upon my return there were hundreds, thousands of ants streaming out of the laptop towards the water. Hundreds had drowned.
I grabbed the laptop, did some frantic blowing and wiping, and the problem seemed over. I’d assumed the ants were dying of thirst, and that keeping my laptop sealed for a few more days would finish off the rest.
Early this morning as I was preparing to return to Cape Town, I opened my laptop case, intending to write a brief summary of the invasion. There were thousands of ants again. I’ve done some more blowing and wiping, and once again I have to assume the ants were on their last legs, in a frenzied search for food and water. We’ll see what happens when I get back to Cape Town though – the invaders seem too hardy for that.
Anyone have any experience in de-infesting a laptop?
UPDATE 27/6: It seems since ants navigate by smell, a large number of strong-smelling spices can help. I’ve tried cinnamon, and it works very well in keeping the ants away (not killing them). It smells nice too.
Haha, oh dear oh dear…
I had a network hub taken over once by these little buggers once…
A screwdriver, half a can of ant-killer, some toilet paper, a vacuum cleaner, a hairdryer, and about 2 hours later, problem solved. Allthough, i think they were after the heat in the hub.
Open the hub, spray the ants, vacuum them up, spray some more, vacuum more, repeat. Toilet paper to dab the now soaked hub. Hairdryer to dry the rest. Put it back together. Worked like a charm. Enough Doom in there to stop other from returning.
Don’t forget to wash your hands. 🙂
Unfortunately they’re deep inside my laptop – opening the battery didn’t reveal their location, and I’m too scared to open it further. I’m not sure about Dooming the innards of my machine 🙂
I am having a similar problem with my ibook. Located in Budapest, these ants seem to be small and redish and today was the last straw when I realized that they were crawling out of the laptop and biting my legs. Already I can not use it in my bed (which is very annoying considering it is a LAPtop.) I’m scared of chemicals and the plastic that my computer is made of. Their favorite place to enter seems to be around the battery, and I discovered they were crawling inside the inards when I removed it to try and get them and they escaped further inside.
How close is the cinnamom. Could a glass of water lure them out? What about the water made them come?
I have a similar problem with my macbook pro. I just moved to Manila about a month ago and live about 10 floors above ground level. As it is the rainy season the ants are moving in and have been found in my laptop. I hope they don’t chew up the circuitry. They also seem to be attracted to the battery area…very strange. Any suggested solutions are much welcomed. maury.otter@gmail.com
My laptop did eventually become ant-free. Keeping the laptop sealed for a while made them very thirsty. Then a nearby glass of water drew them out. I repeated this twice, then used cinnamon around the machine to persuade any stragglers to move elsewhere. It seemed to work!
i am now suffering the same problem in Dar Es Salaam. ugh. will try your last suggestion.
Hey, uhm, I have the same problem… I left my laptop off and unplugged overnight and when i checked in the morning, there were hundreds of ants infesting it! i kinda blew and wiped most of them off and moved my laptop to a different part of the house. but now, right now, they’re back again under and inside my laptop! its not sunny, its no rainy either. i don’t eat or drink near my laptop so there are NO food particles in or on my laptop… they dont seem to be causing any problems now but im afraid they might damage the circuitry or something… can anyone help?
I have the same problem, except I’m not really sure if they’ve actually gotten into my computer, I got thousands under my keyboard though. I recommmend using a vacuum cleaner to get them out. DO NOT USE BUG SPRAY.. nearly killed my computer with it.
There is a rumour going around that ants are attracted to electricity, that’s probably why they’re hanging around your battery. Leave it on for 2 straight day and the heat will probably kill them, just vacuum the dead ants out.