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.
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April 10th, 2006 at 12:29 pm
I’m having trouble finding a DC-in jack for a Satellite A45-S150.
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Do you have one or know where I can obtain one?
Thank you
And great site, too !!
April 7th, 2006 at 8:11 pm
Hey Gary,
Toshiba Satellite A70 and A75 has the same jack as Satellite M35X. When you remove the system board from the laptop, you can wiggle the DC jack and see witch connector has to be resoldered. When I resolder the DC jack, I usually remove it from the system board first. Then I clean up all four legs and apply new solder coat on it. After that I clean traces on the system board (both sides) and apply new coat on them too. Finally, I put the DC jack back in place and solder all 4 legs.
95% the DC jack fails because the “+” leg looses the connection with the trace.
April 7th, 2006 at 4:10 am
Hey,
Can you tell me exactly where to solder for a A75 – S211 DC jack. Is it the same as the M35X. I took apart the laptop to see if the Flickering LED / Shutdown prob was due to the DC Jack and it seems so, as the jack seems to be moving around loosely.
Thanks for your help in advance
April 6th, 2006 at 5:36 am
After I had used your guide to disassemble the A70 and fix this problem I found this post about the power jack. I must say you are right on with this one. The power jack was exactly as you described it, cracked at the base where it connects to the system board. Too bad I did the soldering before finding this page. It would have saved me some time..
A million thanks!
.fri
April 4th, 2006 at 10:15 pm
[...] Poorly designed DC-IN power jack on the system board. Overtime, the DC power jack gets disconnected from the system board. If it happens, you will experience a problem with charging the battery or the laptop may not start at all. Read more: Toshiba Satellite M35X and A75 power jack and battery charge problem. Toshiba Satellite 1900 laptop looses power and shuts down without warning. [...]
April 4th, 2006 at 2:58 pm
Oh, the adapter is fine, its a kensington universal 120 watt. I test 10 -20 laptops with it a day. Check me out on ebay under e-b-s
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,
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.
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”.
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