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.
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February 3rd, 2007 at 3:53 pm
go to your battery advanced settings . Set the display to be bright on battery. If you resoldered it on one side only , it might not work!
The first time you plug it in practicly weakens it, the second time plugging it in breaks it! I know i used to pop some screws out and stick a hot knife off the stove in there right after!!. “I might even be a redneck” lol
February 3rd, 2007 at 10:02 am
I soldered the pin and this fixed my problem of the battery not charging. Now the computer also won’t work from AC. The plug light is not green and the display is not as bright as it is on AC power. How can I fix this?
February 3rd, 2007 at 5:41 am
I have a toshiba laptop, I am not sure of the brand details becoz I am in a cafe at the moment. My problem is that it wont boot – up. If you press the on button, the is a sound of the processor and the fan running for about 30 sec and then it goes quite, nothing happens. What suprises is if you press the on button again as if you want to boot it up again, it makes a beep like that one that happens when you switch it off. It will actually be on only that it does not boot up.
February 2nd, 2007 at 2:36 pm
Answer to post #311
I had the same problem with my m35x laptop. Originally I thought it was the power adapter but after reading this thread I found out that it was the DC Jack. This is what I did instead…
January 29th, 2007 at 4:55 am
hey just take the board out and solder a wire from the board to the positive pin and make sure the pin isnt attached to the board but to the wire. add some appoxy to give it the stiffness the board would have gave it. You need to do this because the problem will reoccur because the stress the cord makes
take the board out pivot on the rear to take out the motherboard . Hit the smart card button to get out of the casing
good luck!!
Phatty:p
http://img2.freeimagehosting.n.....1f577b.jpg
http://img2.freeimagehosting.n.....764345.jpg
January 29th, 2007 at 4:49 am
just a guess try reattaching the keyboard make sure the sleeve is all the way in
try it good luck
January 28th, 2007 at 6:31 pm
Hello everybody. I have a Toshiba A75-S211. I have a weird problem. When I start my computer it doesnt still charging the battery. When the battery is over the computer turn off, in that moment when the computer is off it start to charge the battery so the unique moment the computer charge the battery is when its off. I tried with the another AC adapter but it the same problem. So the adapter is working good. If you know something I can do about this problem please drope and email me, thanks
January 28th, 2007 at 6:22 pm
ADD-ON to POST: (312) Toshiba Satellite 1905-S301 laptop NEW DEVELOPMENT…..I plug it in and get a amber battery light and a green plug light but laptop no longer powers up….no fans nothing…=/…..im thinking main board failure…i didnt do anything to it and last night it powered up with a quick dim flash on the lcd and then complete darkness but i had HD light flashing like it was booting with no video and when i went to a monitor to check if it was just the lcd i had vertical lines that shuddered when i moved my finger across the touch pad…im looking at the thing right now and both lights went out then the atenna light on the far right flased while the others went out, then the plug light came back on and when i moved the pwr jack in the back the battery light is comming and going…it seems to be solid now but still not powering up now….im stumped!
January 28th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
I hope this is the right place to post with my problem…I found lots of useful info here so i thought i’d give it a shot. I am a print/plotter and general office machine techician so i know my way around a circuit board. I’ve also been doing laptop power jack repairs for the last four years and have done this repair on just about every make u can think of…In my honest opinion the newer toshibas have a power jack that is mounted via wires to the main board which nakes replacment a lot easier and is by far the best design i have seen. Now to my problem. I have a Toshiba Satellite 1905-S301 laptop. Since ive owned it Ive had a hard drive failure in this machine but that was a long time ago and i replaced it and it worked fine for almost a year after that. I did have some video flickering after i bought this thing used but fixed it with some tape…it turned out to be a loose connection between the data cable and the lcd right where it plugs into the board mounted at the top of the backside of the lcd screen.. My dog snagged the power cable and broke both the jack and the power supply. I ordered both and soldered a new jack back on the board. Before this happened i was having overheating problems where my machine would just shut down. I realized this was usually when i had the laptop on my “lap”, crazy place to use it i know =), sometimes i would accidently cover up the fan induction opening. Thats when the laptop would shut down. When i tore it apart to replace the power jack i found my entire cooling system was clogged thanks to my pet cat “spike”. Cat hair had clogged everything. I cleaned it all out and I put the machine back together and it worked great with the exception of having no sound, i forgot to plug the sound cables back in. It took me awhile to get around to plugging in the sound wires. During this time i had no over heating issues and my fan was blowing nice and powerful. When i went in to plug in the speaker wires a few montes later i buttoned up the machine and when i went to start it up i had vertical lines and then no video just darkness. All my lights work fine and the hard drive is working. I hooked up to a monitor and again i have vertical lines but constant. Then if i touch my touch pad and move my finger around the lines flicker so i know things are still working and my main problem is my video. I havent been using it for monthes now and the other day decided to tear it down one more time..i found that i may have plugged the wire loom that goes into the small board mounted right below the lcd right behind where it says TOSHIBA on the screen side of the laptop. Im not sure it was backwards but it did look kind of half in so i figured HA ive found it! well i didnt =(…Then i found this page on the net and after reading i decided that maybe i had a loose processor…i tore it back down and confirmed that the processor is securly mounted and i reseated it anyways just to be sure. I powered it up and i get one dimm flash and nothing but darkness….when i plug into an external monitor i get vertical lines that flicked when i move my finger across my touch pad…what shoud i do next….mainboard?…processor?… i was also thinking that little board behind the TOSHIBA on the screen side of the laptop might be suspect. Oh i forgot to say… i had to replace my on/off button board. It started out where i just had to push harder and harder until that stopped working….i found the part on the net and replaced it. It worked great after. So what should i do next? Thanks for the help in advance…..
January 28th, 2007 at 11:12 am
I have a Toshiba Satellite A70 and i had problem with the DC jack so i took the laptop and resolder the + dc pin on the motherboad.
the notebook is now working fine if its plug in the wall, but it took about 5-6 hours to charge the batteries
the orange led that indicate that the battery is charging doesnt even come one, but when its fully charge the green led indicated it come on.
plus, when the battery is fully charge, it only last 10 min max be4 the laptop shup down by itseft.
any idea on that ???