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!
September 11th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
my toshiba L25s121 can not charge the battery. i gotta new battery and a new charger. when i connect to ac power the charging light lits but the icon at the bottom right corner shows battery is charging but is not actually. when i plug off the computer it shuts off due to lack of charge. i upgraded the BIOS but still no result
September 9th, 2007 at 5:02 pm
I just redid the bottom soldier point of the + pin (even thought it looked fine before) and everything seems to work now
September 9th, 2007 at 8:32 am
My laptop will not power at all with or without the adapter plugged in.
I am following the instructions on how to fix the DC in power problem. However i ran into trouble. The DC jack unit on my laptop (M35X-S311) is glued (massively) to the system board. So there is no visual to the top connection of the + pin of the DC, the soldier point on the bottom of the system board looks fine, so i am assuming it is either the the top connection of the + pin or the whole DC unit needs to be replaced. However it looks nearly impossible, because of all the (yellow hard) glue, which is all over the DC unit, PL1 and PF1. I did not see that problem on any of the pictures above nor anybody mentioned of it.
Please advice
September 1st, 2007 at 4:00 pm
What kind of wire do you use if the traces are damaged?
Lyle
August 30th, 2007 at 12:44 pm
Hi,
I have a M35x-S349. I have fixed the DC jack problem but when I disconnect the AC power and try to use battery only computer will not start. When connecting the AC power the battery seems to be charging normally and the OS reports the battery as fully charged.
Anyone experienced this problem?. Any solutions?
Thanks.
August 25th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
BT,
First of all, Toshiba extended warranty for Satellite M30X, M35X, A70 and A75 series laptops sold in the United States. So, if you are experiencing an issue with this model, just take it to the authorized repair center and they will fix it at no charge.
Second, if the laptop freezes up when you touch it, it’s a known issue with this model. Check out this post.
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,
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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.