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 … 46 45 44 43 42 [41] 40 39 38 37 36 … 1 » Show All
June 25th, 2007 at 3:04 am
I have a Toshiba Satellite M45 S-165 and i have a problem. Few days ago I turned it on and it started just fine. After a few minutes the whole system was dead. When I tried to turn it on it did not work. I have tried to remove the battery, removed the RAM, removed the HDD but nothing. When I plug the DC cable in the laptop there is no LED indicating that the computer has power.
Any suggestions what it might be?Thanks
June 20th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
I have a M35X-S149. Lately I have been having some sort of power issue, but I can’t pin point it. At first, the system would not boot unless I wiggled the power cord, or smacked it if I was running it with just the batt. pack. About a week ago this method began to not work. I can get the pc to turn on, boot, and use it for a while. Either spontaneously, or if I decide to switch to battery only (which usually always has a full charge/ or no problems charging it), the pc decides to “STOP”. The screen appears as if the power is completely off. However, the blue light around the power button, and the corresponding power LEDs on the front indicate that the power is on. The HDD read/write light doesn’t even work. Therefore, I know that the HDD lost power, but the entire system didn’t. I have problems when I try to reboot from this stage. I can’t always get the system to reboot. I don’t feel that I have overheating issues, my fan is at max cooling mode, and I have a Targus Chill pad to help keep the system cool. Could my power issue be related to the DC jack? Since I am off warranty, I can operate on my sick laptop. So here is another question: How do I open the case if I can’t get all the screws loose? Some of them appear to be stripped (I can’t get a grip on the phillips head screws.).
Thanks for your help!
June 19th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
I have resoldered the power jack on an M35X as per the suggestions on here. Worked OK for a while then started the 5 second fan running with no boot problem again. I have heard that it is necessary to resolder the 40-48 pin chip near the jack to correct this. I took it apart to attempt this. Looks next to impossible for a do-it-yourself deal. I did notice that one of the ground connectors was loose. Is it possible this is the problem. My old feeble eyes cannot see a loose connection on the chip???
Any comments appreciated.
Dave
June 19th, 2007 at 11:35 am
I have a problem with my battery charging and the ac power. I am pretty sure it is not the power jack problem since wiggling the cable does not help. When I try to have the ac and the battery plugged in at the same time while the laptop is on it doesn’t detect the ac and goes on battery. When I try to charge the battery with the laptop off it shows the plug in light on, the battery light orange and then the battery light goes off and the power light goes off. Then they turn back on again. It just repeats this forever every 5-10 seconds. The top cover is new and modified and the DC Jack appears to have already been replaced and reinforced with hot glue so it doesnt move at all.
It is a Toshiba Satellite A70
Part #: PSA70C-KL100E
June 11th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
Hey,
Thanks alot for posting this info. I had the same problem with mine. The Geek Squad wanted $175 to fix it. It took me about 1/2 hour to fix it following your instructions. Thanks again.
June 10th, 2007 at 10:56 am
Shank,
If the power LED and the battery LED always glow and do not flicker when you move the power plug, most likely there is nothing wrong with the power jack.
Remove the hard drive and start the laptop without it. In some cases a faulty hard drive can halt the entire system. If you can get video without the hard drive installed, probably it’s your problem.
I think this problem also can be related to a faulty memory module. If you have any extra memory installed into the expansion slot, remove it and test the laptop with the base memory. If the problem still exists even after you remove the hard drive and extra memory module, you might have a faulty motherboard.
June 8th, 2007 at 10:28 am
Hi cj2600,
Thanks for the reply.
No it does not flash. Out of three frond side LEDs, two LEDs are glows after plug in the power - green light which I believe is power indicatior and yellow light which I think is battery indicator. Hard disk LED is the one never turns ON.
Even if I removed or put the battery in Laptop, I always see yellow LED glowing after I plug in Power adapter.
I have disassebled the Laptop, cleaned eveything with brush(didn’t put the grease on CPU though), adjusted CPU, cleaned both fans, adjusted video card etc but problem simply wouldn’t go away.
June 7th, 2007 at 7:05 pm
Shank,
Does your laptop run form the battery power at all? Does the power LED flashes when you wiggle the adapter power plug on the back of the laptop?
June 6th, 2007 at 6:04 am
i have a nec versa lite tablet and every time i plug in the ac adapter into the dc jack noting happens i tested the the ac adapter and it works fine is it the I/O board or the dc jack itself
June 5th, 2007 at 10:19 pm
My Toshiba A75 stopped working abruptly. Aftet reading over few Q and A I realised it could be because of falulty DC Jack. It has all the systoms what is described for DC IN Jack but I see my fan runs for fraction of seconds every time I plugged in power adapter. Could you tell if this is too caused by falty DC Jack ? Your help will be appreciated.