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
633 Responses to “Toshiba Satellite M35X and Satellite A75 power jack and battery charge problem”
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Pages: « 64 … 27 26 25 24 23 [22] 21 20 19 18 17 … 1 » Show All
October 27th, 2006 at 5:49 am
Hi guys its been an entertaining read all this. My problem with my Toshiba P30- 141 is sending my hair gray. Usual DC jack problem where it had become loose. Took it in to shop and they fixed the Jack and it worked for about 2days. The laptop charges now and again but when plugged in to ac adaptor and switch it on the battery light goes off and it wont work from the ac adaptor. Battery runs dead in the end , constantly does it after about 20 tries the battery light will charge and it will stay on for a few hours. Spoke with the people who fixed the machine and they said that it is definatley not the DC jack as they repaired it and it is another issue ie the charging board on the laptop. i have also noticed the heat on the laptop goes very hot as i ran speed fan and it goes from 29c to 40c after an hour or so, they said all the fans where cleaned so i dont know why this thing is overheating so much. if anyone can shed any light on this that would be great. Thanks
October 27th, 2006 at 2:12 am
I have exactly the same problem, but with a Toshiba Satellite 1905-S301.
Has anyone seen a guide that shows how to get to the board of the 1905? The only guide I have found for the 1905 shows how to replace memory, which is way too easy.
Actually, after opening the cover for memory replacement, I can solder the bottom side of the board to the power module (with a long solder tip). I am unable to get to the other side of the board to solder the top side of the power module.
Thanks!
October 23rd, 2006 at 6:35 pm
Hi Mike,
That’s a good question and honestly I don’t know the answer. I asked the same question other technicians and didn’t get a straight answer.
I think yes, the laptop should work if you remove the onboard memory and install an external memory stick. But I’m not sure. I don’t know if the BIOS requires the onboard memory to be present in order to start up the laptop.
I’ll try it as soon as I can find an abandoned motherboard with failed onboard memory. Please let us know if it works for you.
October 23rd, 2006 at 6:24 pm
Ozzyyz,
I guess it could be a grounding issue. Remove the LCD panel and the top cover and start the laptop with an external monitor. If you still have the same issue with video, check if the motherboard is seated properly. Make sure that metal pieces located on the laptop base are not bent and not touching the motherboard. Check the top cover too.
Just recently I had a similar issue after I replaced the jack. The laptop had an intermittent boot up issues. After I removed the top cover I found that a metal piece located on the top cover was bent and touched the motherboard when I had my hands on the top cover.
Check the video cable connector on the motherboard. Make sure that the connector has no bent pins and the cable plugged in all the way down.
October 23rd, 2006 at 5:45 am
Well it just so happens that I work for a company at which we build our own boards in house, so I can probaby get someone in production to help me out with that, since after all this is the company’s laptop. Do you think it would be possible to remove the onboard memory and simply replace it with external ram?
October 22nd, 2006 at 2:36 pm
I’ve done the pig-tail workaround “succesfuly” on an A75-259, but now the screen seems to be pulled or blured to the left
gradually until the screen goes blank or simply the screen suddenly looks like a scrambled image. but the fans, leds, etc still functioning, sometimes it happens at the Toshiba Splash, sometimes at the XP booting (the screen with the “walking” bar), sometimes under XP fully working and sometimes (the few) everything is fine until the next reboot.
Its the wife’s laptop so she getting me crazy with the whinning.
Any suggestions?
October 21st, 2006 at 11:34 am
hello i was wondering if any body can help me with a manual of some sort or guideness in putting a Toshiba M35X-S149 back together it had a bad power jack and I replaced it but the problem was i wasn’t the on that put it disassembled if some can please help that will be great thanks.
October 20th, 2006 at 12:45 pm
Kevin, Mike,
You are right, it might be just a bad RAM, but unfortunately Toshiba Satellite A75 has a memory permanently soldered to the motherboard.
In the comment 208 Mike said:
I assume he’s not using any external memory module and did run the test with the onboard RAM. So, even though it could be just a failed RAM, you still have to replace the motherboard. OR find somebody who can attempt to replace the onboard memory.
October 20th, 2006 at 12:37 pm
Manbehindthemadness,
Have you checked if the power jack has good, clean solder points and there is no short between traces? Probably you’ll have to open it up again and examine the jack solder points with a magnifying glass. If you cannot find anything wrong with the solder points, then I would assume that something is wrong with the system board. Sorry, I do not work with motherboards on component level and cannot point to the problem.
I would probably try re-flashing the BIOS too.
October 20th, 2006 at 12:27 pm
Mike, I had this problem when my ram went bad. I replaced the ram and everything worked fine.