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!
April 8th, 2007 at 8:26 am
I last posted a comment here in early Janyary 2007 after I’d repaired the charging problem on my Satellite A70.
As I predicted, the repair, which was to simply resolder the +ve pin on the DC jack, didn’t last. It started to play up again 2 weeks ago.
This time I replaced the jack with a new one and epoxyed it to the M/B before resoldering the pins. I have to say that after seeing how Toshiba fitted the jack to the M/B its a miracle that it lasted a week given the stresses put on it every time the power plug is inserted and withdrawn.
Hopefully, this time the repair will last. But just in case, when I bought the new jack I bought a spare and if it fails again I’m going to try the external work around.
By the way, I did write to Toshiba Australia to alert them to the problem and asked them if the US class action settlement would be extended to their Australian customers. Toshiba, to their credit, did respond but their answer was “no, we’re very sorry to hear about your problems but we can’t help you”, a response I’ll bear in mind next time I purchase any electronic equipment.
One good thing was that second time around dismantling and reassembling the darn thing wasn’t nearly as stressful as it was the first time.
Anyway, thanks again to CJ2600 and all the other contributors to this site. I wouldn’t have dared attempt a repair without your help.
April 7th, 2007 at 11:10 am
Andy,
Maybe you have a faulty hard drive? Test the drive with Hitachi’s drive fitness test, run an advanced test. You’ll find a link to this utility in “Resources” on the right side.
April 7th, 2007 at 10:33 am
Mike,
Probably the power jack still not making a good contact with the motherboard. Did you remove the jack from the motherboard and cleaned the contacts or you just added some solder without removing the jack? I usually unsolder the jack from the motherboard, then clean contacts on the jack and also clean soldering pads on the motherboard, apply some fresh solder on contacts and solder the jack back in place.
I think it’s just power settings (brightness settings). The screen dimmed a little because the laptop runs from the battery.
By the way, Toshiba extended warranty for this model (units sold in US) and you might be eligible for a free repair. Call Toshiba and ask them about the warranty extension for Satellite A75.
April 6th, 2007 at 6:17 am
I have a Toshiba Satellite S401. My wife spilled coffee on the desk and it got on the bottom components near the power jack. As soon as the coffee hit the components, the power went off and as never returned. I have taken it apart and used an Ohm meter to test the circuits in random places throughout the mother board, which have all checked out fine. When I plug in the power, the multimeter (on the proper setting) measures DC V coming into the immediate power jack. However, the power does not appear to be consistently making it beyond the power jack. The traces seem to be OK according to the Ohm test, but the power is not making to the other components. Any thoughts?
April 4th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Hi there
Hope someone can help me as this laptop is causing me a massive headache
Had the P30 for 2 1/2 years now, had my share of problems , DC connection having to be repaired, and overheating due to clogging of the fans/heatsink etc
the past few months I’ve noticed problems again with the DC connection, works ok but if u knock the laptop slightly it loses its charge and the orange light goes off and it runs from the battery, the laptop has to be turned off in order for it to be charged again. Also there is a hissing/crackling noise coming from the charger when plugged in
I downloaded ATI Catalyst software few days back and since then I’ve had nothing but problems, I got an error mom.exe and since then I’m getting constantly rebooted at random times, I formatted my system using the master CD, the laptop was back to factory settings, but 2 mins into windows I got rebooted, I formatted again and put an original XP SP2 disc and used that to put a fresh xp on my laptop. But again I was getting rebooted without no warning. I had obviously installed the drivers of all my hardware from the Toshiba disc.
Now my system is totally messing with my head, I can get into windows with no problem, I can surf the internet with no problem, I tested a game for 5 hours last night (high spec game) there was no reboots at all, and computer ran fine. if i open up windows media player and search for songs my computer reboots, I tried installing software programs like nero and system mechanic it rebooted again, I watched a film using windows media player and that ran fine, its when its searching for songs it goes off, i just cant understand how random this is , I cant see the problem being the video card (games run fine) and I do not think the problem is a power related issue because the game ran fine with the fans spinning, got slightly hot but that is normal I suppose. It’s mainly when I’m accessing certain files on my C: drive is when it reboots
does anyone think this is to do with the power problem
thanks in advance
April 3rd, 2007 at 5:43 pm
Toshiba A75 S211 – I just resoldered the infamous jack back on and got it re-assembled without much problem. Both A/C and Battery Charge LED’s are on and bright.
However, I have a curious anomaly. First – it would not boot up on A/C. I’d get the Toshiba screen then it would just die. I tried to run it sans the battery and same problem. So, I waited for it to charge fully and was able to boot up. It seemed my problems were over but I noticed that the screen dimmed suddenly a little – kinda like when something draws on your house current. But the computer still ran so I went about running it to be sure it wasn’t going to die.
Well… the battery ran out. I wondered why it was off when I came back to it a little over an hour later. I hit the power button and it came out of hibernation just fine. Hmmm, I walk away and not long come back and it’s back in hibernation.
After sitting down and mulling over it, I see a low-battery warning! Even tho the A/C LED was bright it was showing to be running off the battery! When it goes into hybernation, the battery charge light comes back on.
So – the computer won’t run on A/C when it’s on. It runs on the battery only. But… when it’s off, it charges the battery. It only charges the battery when it’s off. I’d hate to have to turn it off every hour for about 4 or 5 hours to recharge the battery.
Is this something that ya’ll have any experience with? It’s a most troubling problem since everything else seems to be running okay.
Thanks,
Mike
March 26th, 2007 at 9:39 pm
Why is my Toshiba MX35 fan running continuously! It has been running for the past 1 hour non stop! This is very frustrating.
Any commets are greatly appreciated.
Joe
March 20th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
bocek,
Make sure both wireless antenna cables are properly connected to the wireless card. I think it shouldn’t matter, but just in case: White cable goes to the main connector on the card, and the black one to the auxiliary connector.
March 20th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
Hi,
I have A75-S231.The overheat and charging problem made the computer useless. But I solved these problems with this site. Thank you. I disassembley the computer and fix the dc in and clean the cpu fan etc. Now working great. Thank you. But now i have a problem with wireless. The signal is too low . It ıs too close to modem but signal low. Do you know why ?
March 17th, 2007 at 3:26 am
How do you disconnect the speaker wires?