Toshiba Satellite 1900. Laptop loses power and shuts down without warning.
This email I received from one guy last evening. He had a problem with DC jack on his Toshiba Satellite 1900 laptop and fixed the problem by resoldering the DC jack on the system board. The problem is very similar to Toshiba Satellite M30X, M35X, A70 and A75 power jack issue.
I finally got around to using the guide you provided to try to solve the problem on my Satellite 1900.
The power plug kept not making contact somehow and ultimately it would shut down.
You would see in the Toshiba Power Management Utility in the Battery Power Meter, the charge bar would show “Online Discharging”, which doesn’t logically make any sense anyway.
If you wiggled the plug at the back of the laptop it might make a connection but could fail at any time with no warning if you weren’t paying close attention to the red/green charge light on the front edge of the laptop and discharge the battery.
I took it apart and discovered that the barrel power socket on the back of the unit that is soldered in to the motherboard had over the course of time worked the centre post contact loose and pulled away from the solder.
There is no real anchor for the socket to the motherboard or anywhere else on the case plastic. The solder on the motherboard that holds the socket in place is very weak, there is not much there at all.
Over the course of normal use, and being a laptop people trip over the power cord from time to time adding to the stress of the almost non-existent solder.
All I did was to re-solder the damaged connection, and I beefed up all of the other three solder points on the motherboard as well to try to strengthen the contacts against failure in the future.
I have provided a picture that if you look very closely at the base of the pin as it goes through the circuit board there is a slight gap between the pin and the solder it used to be attached to.
I search all over the internet and the only resolution I could find for this problem was to have the motherboard replaced. It appears that is not the case. I repaired it 6 hours ago and it hasn’t failed since.
Entry Filed under: Toshiba Laptop Problems
92 Responses to “Toshiba Satellite 1900. Laptop loses power and shuts down without warning.”
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Pages: « 10 9 8 7 [6] 5 4 3 2 1 » Show All
November 13th, 2006 at 11:55 pm
Thomas,
Did you check the power saver utility settings? You can find this utility in the control panel but I don’t know the exact name for this utility on Compaq laptops. You can use this utility to set up the screen brightness for different power modes. For example you can set the screen brightness to be 100% when the laptop runs from the AC adapter and 60% when it runs on the battery power. May be the screen brightness is set to minimum for AC power and maximum for the battery. That would explain why the screen becomes dim when you plug the AC adapter.
November 12th, 2006 at 10:18 am
I have a similar (but opposite) variation of the problem on my evo n610c. My laptop works fine on the battery, but as soon as I plug AC cord in, the LCD goes very very dim, while the rest of the laptop is still running??? The battery charges fine. I need to reboot the laptop on battery power after the charge is complete to get it working again. Any ideas?
November 7th, 2006 at 4:55 am
Hi! I had the same problem with my satellite 1900. I disassembled the it as shownhere Toshiba Satellite 1900 disassembly
and replaced the power connector.
October 22nd, 2006 at 6:43 am
I had the same symptoms as you describe on my Acer Aspire 1400. About 6 months ago, it fell over with the AC adapter plugged in and from then on, the battery wouldn’t charge correctly and I would get unexpected shutdowns.
After reading this article, I pulled the entire thing apart and found that one of the pins on the DC Jack was disconnected and not attached to the motherboard. A little drop of solder, a fixed connection and it has been on for about 4 hours now. The battery is charging and I think it might be fixed.
Thanks for a great article and a very helpful site.
October 20th, 2006 at 9:45 am
Cos,
Your LED error s-l-s-s-s-s-s-l in binary system would be 01000001. To find out what it means, you’ll have to right it backwards and translate it into hex. It would be 10000010 or 83 in hex. Unfortunately there is no 100% remedy against this error. Toshiba recommends replacing the power supply board first, if it doesn’t help replace the system board and finally the CPU.
When we have to repair Satellite Pro 6100 that has a similar problem, we usually replace two parts: the system board and the power board. We believe that the problem occurs because of a faulty connection between the power board and the system board. I would try reseating the power board first, in some cases it helps.
Here’s a disassembly guide for Toshiba Satellite Pro 6100 laptop. The power board is pictured on the step 16.
The power jack failure is not a known issue on this model. Fortunately, the power jack is located on a pigtail and not permanently soldered to the system board. If it fails, you can purchase a new jack and just plug it into the system board.
BTW, I believe that Toshiba will fix Satellite Pro 6100 (sold in USA) for free even though the laptop is not under warranty anymore. In your case I would call Toshiba customer service and ask them about it. You have nothing to loose.
October 19th, 2006 at 11:53 am
Hi
Have a Satellite Pro 6100 that won’t start up at all. The power LED flashes orange as follows s-l-s-s-s-s-s-l (s=short, l=long). Anyone know about this particular problem? Is the power jack problem also a known one on the 6100 does anyone know?
Cheers
October 17th, 2006 at 7:21 pm
HI
I HAVE REPLASED THE DC- JACK ON MY TOSHIBA LAPTOP M35X-S309 BUT ITS NOT WORKING AT ALL IS ANYONE KNOW WHAT TO DO ?
September 26th, 2006 at 10:27 am
Thank you for your information. My toshiba is up again¡¡¡
August 31st, 2006 at 12:12 am
Sorry Ed,
I have no idea what RC1 is and how it can affect the battery charging.
August 31st, 2006 at 12:10 am
Peter,
If you want to back up your hard drive, you can use an external USB enclosure. You can buy a laptop hard drive USB enclosure in any local computer store for $10-20. After that you have to remove the hard drive from the laptop, install it inside the enclosure and connect it to any working computer via USB interface. The hard drive should be detected automatically and you can transfer all needed data. Here’s another way to connect a laptop hard drive to a desktop computer.