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 find this article useful, please consider making a donation to the author. Thank you!
January 14th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Chalangedinafrica,
I think the battery will charge even without the LED board connected to the system board, you just will not see the LED light when the battery is charging.
Make sure the LED/touchpad board cable is seated properly, all way down inside the connector. May be you have some kind of grounding issue? Remove the top cover from the laptop and examine the internal surface of the cover, make sure nothing is touching the motherboard. Check if the motherboard is seated properly inside the laptop base.
January 14th, 2007 at 11:14 am
Jessie,
Sounds like a dead motherboard, sorry.
January 14th, 2007 at 10:46 am
Brian Brown,
Make sure the memory stick is seated properly. Try reseating RAM, it might help.
January 14th, 2007 at 8:14 am
Sir; I have a Toshiba Satellite M35X, my wife spilled water on it and the power went off quickly. I stood it up on its edge over night with a fan on it to dry it out. Today I pluged it back in and the power lights on the frount come on and the C.D. seams to be working but the main power light and the scream still doesnt come on. Power is there but the computer wont come on. Can you tell me what could be the problem? ars.
January 12th, 2007 at 7:44 pm
i just actually sent my laptop with this problem to the repair guy. it’ll cost me $170. i know i know, it’s too much. that’s why i’m writing again. the warranty of the repair is only 3 months, and i’m pretty sure that after a year or so (or less!), i would have the same problem again. i saw the link to the article of the guy who put the jack outside. i MAY try that, since i think that’s the best solution.
my problem is… well.. i don’t think i have enough guts to open that laptop. i mean, it’s pretty complicated, and i don’t know what would happen. my questions is.. do you guys think that i, who has never opened a computer before, would be able to do the task? the pictures really help, and i think i could, maybe i just need a little encouragement. hehehehe.
oh and one question, when you dismantle the laptop, do you need to reinstall anything? and to fix this jack problem, do you have to dismantle the whole whole machine?
i would appreciate your reply.
January 10th, 2007 at 9:52 pm
I’m having the same problem with my Toshiba P35-s609. Do these instructions apply to the P35. I have gotten this sent in by the warranty 3 times. I am actually getting a new system under the protection plan. Until then I don’t know when my laptop is going to work, and I don’t konw if they are going to let me keep my old system. Anyway any suggestion would be appreciated. By the way, this site is a godsend.
January 10th, 2007 at 5:03 am
Last month, I opened up an M35X to discover thet the plate thru (pictured above) had been fried by the poor connection, over time. From a guy who has been fixing these things for over 30 years, I have to wonder why the design engineers have forgotten a big rule of design; NEVER place high current traces on the top of any PCB without adequate, multiple, paths through the PCB. It is a guaranteed point of failure.
Anyway; the fix isn’t too bad and I would reccomend it to anyone who faces the loose jack.
Use a small screwdriver or razor to scrape some of the green solder mask off of the PCB next to the pin on the top side. Strip a small piece of 24-30 guage wire and bend it into an L shape at the end. Place the vertical section of the L against the DC pin lead in the jack. Solder it to the cleaned area and the pin, then cut off the excess wire.
Establishing a good electrical connection between the DC jack’s pin and the trace on the PCB carrying the current will solve that problem once and for all.
P.S. I can submit a photo if someone tells me where to send it.
January 9th, 2007 at 9:12 pm
Thank you for the high quality posts on this forum.
I have a Toshiba A75-S229 with the same intermittent power problem. The machine was working great until a few months ago, when it began to randomly switch from AC power to battery.
It now boots almost always into battery mode, even though the AC power cable is plugged in. It then drains the battery. Jiggling the AC adapter, wire, or plug has no effect. If I unplug, wait a few seconds, and plug back in, I get a momentary AC power icon from the Toshiba Power Management utility, and then it drops back to battery power.
The only way I can get AC power for more than a few seconds is to repeat the plug-and-unplug cycle several times until it sticks. Even then, it randomly drops to battery after a few minutes to a few hours.
Jiggling the cable or moving the laptop tends to drop the AC connection.
Interesting thing is that the green LEDs on the front of the machine light up whenever I plug in AC power, without fail. So the front of the machine knows I’m getting AC, but the back doesn’t!
I’ve now set my screen to a dimmer setting when on battery so that I can tell when the random switch occurs, and I don’t end up draining the battery.
I will go back to Best Buy and see if the Geek Squad has an AC adapter that I can try out, to see if the problem follows the adapter or the jack.
January 9th, 2007 at 9:19 am
My Harddrive died and I had to go buy a new one…I wants money from Toshiba :p
January 7th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
I have a two year old Satellite A70. Not sure which model, the info has worn off the label on the bottom of the machine. I had the intermttent power and battery charging problem. Took it to a Toshiba service centre who charged me a $65 (Australian) diagnosis fee to tell me I needed a new motherboard at a cost of $1,000. I didn’t think the machine was worth that sort of money so bought a new $2,800 Dell laptop.
On the verge of throwing the Toshiba into the gargage I found this site and dismatled the darn thing. Sure enough, even to my untrained eyes, the +ve pin on the DC jack had come loose from the motherboard. I resoldered it (First time I’ve ever tried to solder anything). Anyway, reassembled the machine and it works perfectly. From what I’ve read here the repair may not last as I didn’t epoxy the jack to the motherboard.
My biggest problem was reinserting the touchpad cable into its connector, you need very small and nimble fingers.
Very disappointed with Toshiba’s service, they clearly didn’t even bother to look at the DC jack, but dead chuffed that, with the help of you guys, I was able to fix it myself. Now trying hard to convince myself that the money spent on a replacement machine wasn’t wasted.
Thanks to you all for your help and a special thank you to cj2600 for all the time and effort he puts into this site.