Toshiba Satellite M35X and Satellite A75 power jack and battery charge problem
A bad connection between DC-IN power jack on the system board and the system board is a very common problem with Toshiba Satellite M35X and Toshiba Satellite A70/A75 notebooks. If your laptop is out of warranty, then you can fix the problem by resoldering DC-IN jack on the system board. If it’s still under warranty, it would be fixed at no charge to you.
Problem symptoms:
- Laptop randomly shuts down without any warning.
- Power LED and battery charge LED start flickering when you wiggle the power cord or the AC adapter tip on the back or your laptop.
- The battery will not get charged.
- When you plug AC adapter, the laptop appears to be dead and there is no LED activity at all (DC-IN jack on the system board is broken).
To fix the problem, you have to take your laptop apart, remove the system board to resoleder or replace the DC-IN jack. Toshiba Satellite M35X and Toshiba Satellite A70/A75 disassembly guides will help you to remove the system board. Take a closer look at the power jack on the system board with a magnifying glass. In most cases you get the power problem because of a bad connection between the DC jack and the system board, you’ll see a crack between the DC jack connector and the system board.
Here is an example of Toshiba Satellite M35X power jack. The crack occurs between the DC jack pin and the system board.
In some cases the connection is good, but the DC jack is bad itself. You can find a new DC jack for Toshiba Satellite M35X and Toshiba Satellite A70/A75 laptops here. Search for DC jack M35X or DC jack A75.
How to resolder laptop power jack yourself.
UPDATE:
Sometimes, after you replace the jack, you can see that the system board doesn’t get power at all. The battery will not charge and the power LED will not light when you plug in the AC adapter. So, here’s a possible explanation.
When a connection between the positive pin and the motherboard breaks (cracks), the power jack gets loose. You can feel it when you plug in the adapter plug. A loose power jack can damage the trace inside the hole in the system board. Take a look at the picture.
As you see, the positive pin goes through the hole in the system board and you solder it on the top side. Right? What if the trace between the top side and the bottom side is broken somewhere inside the hole? I’ve seen it before a few times. In this case everything looks nice and clean on the top side. When you plug in the AC adapter, you get normal voltage readings between “+” and “-“ pins on the top side, but the power DOESN’T go to the motherboard at all, because there is no connection between the top and bottom sides. Test with a multimeter if there is a connection between the top and the bottom.
If the trace inside the hole is broken you still can fix it. You can run a wire to connect the top and the bottom sides. Be careful not to short something on the board.
Update:
Here’s another solution to fix the power jack problem, it shows how to relocate the power jack outside the laptop base. Check it out here: Toshiba Satellite A75 failed power jack workaround.
When you repair a loose power jack, it’s a good idea to check the jack on both sides of the motherboard. When you remove the top cover from a Toshiba Satellite A70/A75 laptop you can see only points where the jack is soldered to the motherboard as it shown on the second picture in this post, but you cannot see the jack itself as it shown on the first picture.
Removing the motherboard from Satellite A70/A75 laptop is a good idea because the jack itself might has a broken “+” pin, as it shown on the picture below. If the “+” broke off the base, you’ll have to replace the jack.
UPDATE:
Today I received another well written and well documented guide about fixing Toshiba Satellite M35X power connector issue. This guide was submitted by Stephen Macuch. Thank you Stephen for great pictures and detailed instructions.
If you are tired of fixing your laptop and want to sell it for parts you can do it here:
Any Notebook Part - free classifieds. Only laptop stuff.
Entry Filed under: Toshiba Laptop Problems
580 Responses to “Toshiba Satellite M35X and Satellite A75 power jack and battery charge problem”
Pages: [58] 57 56 55 54 53 52 51 50 49 48 … 1 » Show All
Pages: [58] 57 56 55 54 53 52 51 50 49 48 … 1 » Show All
June 30th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
sorry my english! :-S i have a Toshiba Satellite A70. When connect it to AC, both LED (battery and power) are ligth. But when i startup the Notebook, the battery LED turn off and i need to “play” with the AC cord to get it turn on again…. but i only have luck many few times. More the times I do that, the Battery led not turn on, and Notebook not start.
Samtimes i have a beep too, when it turn on and battery is connected.
To use the Notebook i do this: get out the battery, turn on the Notebbok (only with AC) and when windows start, i put the battery in the Notebook.
Please tell me if you think this may help me!!
Thanks
June 28th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
I have a M35x that has been fixed once already for the defect in the dc power plug. My computer now has a problem when i turn on the computer the blue led light comes on and sounds like it is going to boot but does not do anything. Have any suggestions to what this might be related to?
June 23rd, 2008 at 11:27 am
Lewis Monroe,
1. Take a look at the power LED on the front of your laptop. It has to light up when you plug it the AC adapter. Does it? If the power LED will not light up when you plug in the power adapter, it’s possible that your adapter is dead and the laptop shuts down after a few second because there is no charge left in the battery.
2. If the power LED lights up and stays on all the time, apparently it’s not the adapter problem. Remove the battery, DVD drive, hard drive and start the laptop just form the power adapter. If the laptop still turns off by itself after a few seconds, I think there is a problem with the motherboard.
June 23rd, 2008 at 11:08 am
Francisco Herrera,
There are no internal layers. If you pulled the copper ring, you can connect the top and the bottom traces with a wire.
You can test the laptop using this method. Minimize the laptop as much as possible, as it shown on the last picture, and test it with an external monitor. If you still cannot get any video, it’s possible that there is a problem with the motherboard.
June 23rd, 2008 at 5:27 am
i have a toshiba satellite m105
when i power it on it stays on for about 7 second then shut back down, the battery & the power cord are hook up
what shell i do?
June 20th, 2008 at 5:26 am
I have the same concerns of response #574 (Herrera). Is there a schematic of the Motherboard available or known points where the 19 volts branches are?
Thanks, for the info and everything
June 14th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Please I need some clarification. I did the process to repair the connector. I remove it and redolder it, it is cleanly solderd in both sides and 19 volts are there when I apply power. I only see the fans spin for halfsecond or so and turn of. I think something remain disconnected from 19 volts. Note when I remove the connector the internal hole copper ring go out with the piece. So I wonder if there are some internal power layer and now it is not connected? If it is so where in the Board can I wire it with a cable to bring the positive 19 volts? Where In the board are the 19 volts present?
Thank you.
June 13th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Hello,
I now own two Toshibas with this same problem (never realized this was the issue with the first one–glad to find out what’s going on.) The second is barely out of warranty.
When my wife called the local notebook repair shop he seemed to immediately know what was wrong as soon as she uttered “Toshiba”.
This seems like the sort of thing that Toshiba should just fix. I’m wondering if this isn’t exactly why there are such things as class action lawsuits.
June 13th, 2008 at 4:57 am
571 reply:
hi there, it seems that we are both having the same problem, my m35x-s329, at first it will start and it will be blank for appx 25- 30 minutes then it will start, but after the windows loads completley it will freeze and wont be able to do any thing besides rebooting it, can’t move the cursor and ctrl + alt + del doesn’t function, i recently had installed a 1gb ram (about 2 months ago) since then it has been perfect but dont know what happened, there is a theory a friend of mine told me about, is that you can’t install a ferrari enzo engine on a honda civic !! i dont know if this is the case though, mine could take up to 2 gb and is now on 1.5 gb.
am thinking about formatting theb whole thing today, am glad i was able to get back ups done for it.
any help will much appreciated …..
June 11th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Brian,
It’s possible that you problem is not heat related. Try testing memory and hard drive, I linked to both utilities in Resources on the right side.