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
602 Responses to “Toshiba Satellite M35X and Satellite A75 power jack and battery charge problem”
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Pages: « 61 … 55 54 53 52 51 [50] 49 48 47 46 45 … 1 » Show All
January 12th, 2008 at 8:23 am
Thanks for the really useful site!
This is the type of information which I think makes the internet so useful.
My wife’s laptop had been flaky for awhile and I knew it was the power connector but had been dreading the disassembly process because there is always a tab or screw you can’t see!
Other than one screw I had to drill out, this made the repair very easy.
And it even worked!
Thanks again.
January 10th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
I have an asus Z91E and need to get to the motherboard to check the condition of the power jack can anyone tell me how to take my laptop apart so that I can make neccesary repairs. I can’t seperate the upper and lower casing. help would be greatly aprecciated
January 8th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
Praveen,
You can easily access the cooling fan from the bottom of the laptop. All you have to do is remove the heatsink door as it shown in this disassembly guide (steps 1-6).
If you are no replacing thermal grease, then do not remove the heat sink. Just remove the door and then blow off dust with canned air or air compressor.
January 8th, 2008 at 2:16 am
i have toshiba satellite A30-714 laptop i am problem with cooling fan it is getting heated and system goes to shutdown. how i can remove the cooling fans can u suggest me.so that i can remove dust from fan
January 6th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
My A75 does not charge the battery as well. I have taken apart my A75 in hopes to fix it. NO problem getting the mother board out but when I check continuity it looks good from the DC jack straight to the mother board. I did touch up the solder joints but I have a feeling it won’t fix the problem since connections seemed OK. Any idea? Can anyone give me a pin out on the battery leads on the MB? And maybe what voltages I should see? I would assume they 19v coming in is stepped down to charged the battery but should I’m looking for some pins and Voltage measurements that I might take before I close it up. Would I see 19V on underside power pin if the DC jack was bad??? I would assume it’s alright.
January 5th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
I am happy to report that I am typing this on my M35X at last. It turns out that the solder joints on the terminals for the ram socket are very weak and easily broken when the motherboard is installed or removed (you can’t help bend it a little). Anyway, I bent the board to get to work, released it to get the screen to scramble, then used a tiny flat-blade jewelry screwdriver on the empty socket side (tried both sides) to push on each terminal until the boot screen went back to normal. In my case it was pin 42. I then wrapped a piece of 22 gauge wire around my 25 watt radio shack soldering iron to get an ultra fine tip. I used a tiny amount of solder and checked it with a magnifying glass. It’s now booting perfectly but took me quite a few hours to figure out. By the way, the d/c jack pigtail is still working perfectly. Thanks!!
January 5th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
John,
Yep, I’ve seen this problem with Satellite M35X laptop a few times before. One day I was fixing a Satellite M35X laptop and I had to replace the motherboard. I had to reorder the motherboard three times because first two motherboards came from Toshiba with the problem mentioned in your comment.
It’s not a bad unit, WHEN IT WORKS.
January 5th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
I have been dealing with this for over a year. I kept taking it in to get worked on, and the computer people tried to tell me it was because I was getting dust in the bottom and then gave it back to me. Then I bought a new charger cable, didn’t work, so I returned it. Then I bought a $75 new battery and it is not returnable. I just spent all this money and I bet my computer is out of warranty. I am very upset about this, especially after reading that this is a common thing. Does anyone know how much a new part costs?????
January 5th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
My M35X is up to its old tricks again. The trick of putting pressure on the ram quit working after a couple of days so I took the motherboard and peripherals (on/off switch, keyboard, mouse) out of the casing and reconnected everything without the casing and still nothing. Then I tried slightly bending the motherboard while powering up the laptop and I can get it to boot up every time. This tells me that there is a bad solder joint or a crack in the board, neither of which I can find. I had that laptop for barely 2 years and treated it very gently. $1200 down the toilet. Thanks Toshiba. I guess I’ll take the chance of $200 for a used motherboard that was designed as badly as mine?
December 29th, 2007 at 1:38 am
My Toshiba M35X will only show a blank screen unless you apply pressure on the the ram sockets. If you release the pressure the computer freezes and the screen turns into a checkerboard pattern. I have plastic spacers taped to the back of the ram cover to hold the pressure and it has been working since. By the way, I have re-soldered the d/c jack 3 times now as my computer is no longer under warranty. Is there a way to buy a new motherboard?