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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August 25th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
Ravish,
Are you kidding me?
Searching for “M35X jack” or “A75 jack” brings you no results??? Then you must be searching or a wrong ebay.
August 22nd, 2007 at 12:39 am
My wife brought home her friend’s Toshiba M35x b/c her friend said the laptop would freeze if she tries to move it and wanted me to talke a look at it since I’m the geek/nerd. I always like a challenge so I’d thought give it a shot…. My first hypothesis was that there was some type of lose connector…. I decided to google to see if others were having similar issues and sure enough, there’s plenty of folks who do. The laptop was experiencing the same issue as many of the other posts…. laptop would begin to boot, fan kicks in for 5 seconds and then everything would freeze but the power light would continue to glow and once in awhile it would fully boot into windows but would freeze if you tried to move it. Would work fine if you left it where it was but you could surf the web and continue on your busines…. I followed the great instructions on this site to dissassemble the laptop… first time ever that I only had 1 screw left over versus about 5
. everything looked intact and the power jack was secure… it looks like Toshiba reinforced it after all their complaints. They had some type of black stuff on it and it felt secure. I figure it may have been some other loose connections so I made sure that I tightened everything I could… put everything back together but had the same symptoms… read through more of this forumn and there was a suggestion about disabling hibernation. I initially tried but windows said that I had to do it through the Toshiba power management versus the standard hybernation setting…. took me forever to find it… (it’s the bulb in the bottom right task bar). I disabled it the first time and then shook the laptop… it powered down as before. I rebooted the laptop, went back in the settings and for some reason it didn’t initially take… I changed the hybernation setting again (unchecked it) and saved and then shut down. I then booted back up and now am bouncing the laptop around as I type this and seems to be stable… must be some type of short on the motherboard that triggers hybernation if it’s enabled…. so long story short, if you have the 5 sec fan and then freeze, if you put it on a stable table and just boot, it should boot into windows… disable hibernation, save your settings and then shut down. Hopefully it will work for ya like it did me.
August 21st, 2007 at 3:38 am
Where can I buy this Jack? Ebay yields no search results. plz help
August 15th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
ilyse,
)
Toshiba Satellite A55 has a power jack attached to the motherboard via cables (DC-IN harness). When the power jack on a Satellite A55 goes bad you have to replace the DC-IN harness. This harness is connected to the motherboard via a connector, so you don’t have to unsolder the jack.
1. Find a new harness by the following part number: P000401770
2. Disassemble the laptop and remove the top cover as it explained on http://www.irisvista.com (make a donation if you find the disassembly guide useful
3. Unplug the defective DC-IN harness and plug a new one.
4. Assemble the laptop
Before you jump in, make sure your problem is not related to the power adapter. Sometimes wires inside the power cord might break and you can get stable power only if you wiggle the power cord. Find a voltmeter and test the adapter. Make sure the voltage remains the same even if you wiggle the power cord.
August 15th, 2007 at 5:45 am
I seem to be having the same problem with my A55. Do you think these plans will help with my model???
August 5th, 2007 at 10:44 pm
I have the same problem with my Toshiba A 70, first I had a sound problem, sometimes it play sometimes it doesn’t. Then I have power problem. When I switch on laptop it does not charge, when I switch off it charge but never full! Last week smoke came out of my keyboard and power jack. I think Toshiba should recall all A 70 laptops in the world and replace them. What do you think?
August 3rd, 2007 at 12:49 pm
I have a M65-S9092 and have experienced some of the power up problems in these posts. The first incident took place 8 months after my purchase. As instructed by Toshiba, I took it to an authorized service center and they concluded that the mother board was bad and replaced it. (Took a month to get the part) Then . .. 4 days out of warranty the same problem start again . . . power light comes on for a few seconds and nothing. Toshiba basically told me it was too bad since it was out of warranty and when I tried to log a complaint with the company, I was forwarded to a customer service line that never answered. This happened several times before I finally took it to a local service center. Interestingly enough . . . they are able to take it apart and remove the battery, reset the cpu . . . and it starts up and runs with no problems? They have not been able to determine what is putting the laptop into this state, but it has happened 3 times since May. So I am wondering if anyone else has figured it out yet.
August 3rd, 2007 at 11:10 am
I seem to be having the same problem with my Toshiba A30 laptop. When I plug in the adapter the LED on the the front of the laptop blinks or just shuts off after a few minutes. I have tried unsucessfully to take the laptop apart to see this dc jack. Can anyone direct me to a site where it gives me directions on how to take the laptop apart to change this jack or possibly solder the part..
July 31st, 2007 at 5:47 pm
Very helpful information. Thankyou all. A point that seems to be missed. The solid +ve pin connection is just asking for trouble since the forces from the plug are transferred directly to the solder connection. Solder is not meant for that. I have an A70 I need to repair and will be replacing the solid connection with small insulated flexible hookup wire. The socket casing may also disconnect but that is another and less likely problem.
July 24th, 2007 at 10:39 pm
Megan,
Satellite A85 is a little bit different the Satellite A75. The power jack is attached to the motherboard via cables. I believe the jack comes with the motherboard and is not sold separately. Probably it’s possible to solder a power jack from another similar model but right now I cannot tell witch one you can use.
Are you sure this is a problem with the power jack itself? Maybe you have a damaged wire inside the power cord on the AC adapter?
You can find the laptop disassembly help at http://www.irisvista.com