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
626 Responses to “Toshiba Satellite M35X and Satellite A75 power jack and battery charge problem”
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Pages: « 63 … 11 10 9 8 7 6 [5] 4 3 2 1 » Show All
April 4th, 2006 at 2:56 pm
Thanks for your help. I have had another laptop with similar issue and the buzzing/clicking seems to be coming from a 1″x1″ chip set on the board marked intel. Don’t know if its a video chip or not. Its not the processor, its one that is soldered/mounted to the board. Its definately not the fan, doesn’t have a hard drive installed. I guess I will keep selling them as is. I know people out there are fixing them because they are buying them from me left and right, just wish I knew the trick to fixing them.
April 4th, 2006 at 12:46 pm
Hi Ted,
Now about a power issue. I guess it might be caused by a bad battery. Try to swap the battery. Might be the battery is shortening something, making the laptop appear to be “dead”.
First of all, I would try to eliminate the buzzing/clicking noise. Try to remove the hard drive, the optical drive, the wireless card, etc… one by one and see if you can get rid of the noise. If you still having the same noise when only the system board, the CPU and the memory left, then I would suspect that the system board is bad. Make sure that the noise is not coming from the fan.
I think it is not the DC jack problem, because most of the time you can get some LED activity by wiggling the power plug, but you say it appears to be “dead” completely.
Have you checked the AC adapter itself?
April 4th, 2006 at 11:26 am
I am a reseller of laptops and I get a lot of problem laptops. I have noticed this condition on a couple of laptops, right now on the bench is a toshiba P15 laptop. When the the battery is in and I hook the laptop up to an ac adapter I get nothing, no signs of power. Now when I take out the battery and plug in the ac adapter I get a buzzing/clicking noise from within the laptop. Could this be as simple as a dc jack replacement or is it something more serious? Now that I have this new test I am finding this to be common with some of the doa laptops I have been getting in.
April 1st, 2006 at 10:36 am
hi
when i put my dc cable in the jack the motherboard becomes heat
March 23rd, 2006 at 9:02 am
thanks cj2600.. the problem is now fixed and everything works fine. thanks to all of you who compiled this page and the one about dismantling the laptop! greetings from croatia!
March 21st, 2006 at 6:20 pm
Hey Gordan,
I am pretty sure you have a problem with the DC jack. I have seen the same pattern as you described many times. The battery is getting charged when AC power is connected, but the battery charge LED goes off as soon as you turn on the laptop.
March 20th, 2006 at 2:11 am
Hi,
i have a75-209 model and at first, I had the problem with static electricity discharge. Then, recently the laptop started to crash suddenly. Then, while connected to AC power, it suddenly started to run on batteries. At first, I was able to wiggle the cord and it would switch back to AC. Lately, it’s close to impossible to use AC power.
Now, when I switch the laptop off, the battery charge indicator lights orange light constantly, and it doesn’t turn green. Then, when I switch the laptop on, the battery charge indicator turns off. I tried using laptop on AC power with batteries removed, but it doesn’t switch on at all.
The AC power light indicitor turns green whenever I plug AC power in.
Are the symptoms of my laptop consistant with the problem described in this article? I have not opened it, will probably do so, it’s just strange that the battery charge indicator switches orange when the laptop is switched off and plugged in AC.
March 19th, 2006 at 7:27 pm
Had the same DC input problem with my Toshiba M35. Of course the warranty had expired the month before. Remebered I bought it on an AMEX card. Turns out they have a buyer assurance plan. I called them and they put me in touch with Micro Medics. They overnight me a box to put the laptop in paid for the shipping and sent it back to me in 2 days with a new DC Input port.
Same program may be available on other cards, Anyway, saved a few bucks for sure.
March 19th, 2006 at 7:15 pm
I have an m35x which had the power problem. I followed the directions here and fixed the solder joint. Thanks. However, when i powered the computer backup, the monitor is showing wrong colors and has a fuzziness. I tried replugging the two feeds to the monitor. I am slightly confused about a black ground with an eyelet. I don’t remember disconnecting this wire but it does not seem right.
thanks
March 18th, 2006 at 11:19 pm
[…] The power jack issue. The laptop will not charge the battery. The laptop LED flicker when you wiggle the power jack. To fix this problem you have to replace or resolder the DC jack on the system board. […]