Today I received an email from Tony Sakariya (tsakariyaATyahooDOTcom) who was experiencing a problem with the power jack on his Toshiba Satellite A75 laptop. He’s been able to fix the problem by relocating the power jack outside the laptop case away from the system board.
I would like to share with others a tip for repairing their Toshiba A75 laptop for the DC Jack and battery charge problem.
I have a Toshiba A75-S209 for a year now. After the first 3 months it developed the exact same problem. Battery would not charge and I had to twist and turn the power jack to make the connection. Since it was in warranty, I returned it and they repaired and sent it back to me. The problem recurred again after about 4 months and I sent it again and they repaired it and worked fine for 5 more months and it failed. This is a design flaw with Toshiba. Now that I am out of warranty, I decided to repair it myself. Your guide for dismantling A75 was awesome. Thanks for the info. Now here is what I want to share with others. Resoldering the power jack with a new one does solve the problem for a while but it will reoccur. Hence I decided to bring out a wire with the Jack outside. Of course it looks dirty but it is a permanent solution. I am attaching the photo of the repair I did. I got the DC jack from ebay and insulated it with a electrical insulation tape. Now it is working fine, I do the connection and disconnection on the dangling power jack outside the laptop and hence no chance of breaking the soldering outside.
• Coil the pair of wire one round through the ventilation grill before taking it out as shown in the picture above. This is to prevent any external shock or force being directly transmitted to the soldering joints.
• Now we need to connect a new DC Jack to other end of the wire. I purchased the new DC jack from here for a price of $6. Shown in the picture above the white wire is the positive terminal (+) and hence must connect to the inner ring of the DC Jack. Similarly the blue wire being the negative terminal (-) should connect to the outer ring of the DC jack. Refer the picture below on how the wires are soldered to the DC Jack. Be careful not to short the leads as they are very close.
• Now neatly wind a round of insulation tape over the wire and especially on the exposed DC Jack exterior. This will prevent any short-circuit and also give a better appearance.
Toshiba Satellite A70/A75. Disassembly guide with pictures.
Valued Comments.
Submitted by Binney:
The workaround relocates the jack externally. When I did this, a short occurred between the metal casing on the top cover (the one removed with the guitar pick). This happens if the solder repair is too tall. I covered my repair with electrical insulation tape and that fixed the problem. It took me quite some time to figure out where the short was and would like to save others the headache.
Comments #282, 286 submitted by Jake and John:
Size N: DC Power Jack #274-1576 from Radioshack works perfect and looks great. Costs $2.99, easier to solder, snugger fit, 5.5mm O.D. x 2.5mm I.D.
Here are some pictures of the end result of the repair with
the Radio Shack type jack. I added one of those quick release
key holder that I had lying around as a retention holder.Here is what it looks like unplugged: Power tip unplugged.
Here is what it looks like with the adapter plugged in and
the key holder reattached: Power tip plugged.
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October 3rd, 2008 at 7:07 am
i have got packard bell laptop i bought it 2 yeaars ago but it died now i showed some repear shops they said that laptop is dead now i dont wanna buy new one i wanna my old laptop it has got power light its working but i cant see in the secren nothing sistem has died can you fix it could you tell me definitly its possible fix it
its not possible sistem might work thanks
September 14th, 2008 at 4:33 am
Made the things with RADOSHACK – starts without problem but when windows starts the yellow light, showing charging of the battery, dissappears. When I remove/insert the battery charging light appears again. Any ideas?
Checked for shortcuts but found nothing. Negative wiring was made from the two points except the point in the middle. Positive only one point. Any ideas please?
September 12th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Okay, thanks I will open the laptop to check the cooling fan cable, and also check for shorted traces. How important is it that the plus pin goes all the way trough and makes contact with the other side of the circuit board? It seems on my M30 there are no contacts on the lower side of the motherboard?
Thx, Ch
September 12th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Christian,
Make sure the cooling fan cable is plugged into the motherboard. It’s possible your laptop shuts down because of overheating.
Take a closer look at your solder job. Maybe accidentally shorted traces with the solder?
September 12th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Hi, thanks for this great tutorial. I soldered everything together as described, and now the LED lights light up, so I have AC power again. The laptop powers up, Windows XP starts, but after a a few minutes the laptop suddenly powers down, even if the LED lights (power green, battery red) are still saying the AC power is okay.
An other odd thing, if I remove the battery the green AC power LED starts to blink rather fast and I cannot start the laptop.
I am thankful for any suggestions,
Christian
September 2nd, 2008 at 10:19 pm
Josh,
Yes, it’s possible. On some laptops the sleeve connect traces on both sides of the motherboard. You accidentally pulled the sleeve and now these traces are not connected. It’s possible you can fix the problem if you connect these traces with a thin wire.
August 31st, 2008 at 7:26 pm
I recently replaced the dc jack on my laptop and I fixed one problem but created a new one. The new problem is that the battery will not charge at all. It works great on AC power but the battery doesn’t charge. I fear it is because I forced out one of the metal sleeves when trying to remove the old broken dc jack. Now that it is gone, is that causing the battery not to charge because the lead is not making contact with anything? If so, how can I fix this new problem? Thanks!
August 20th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Thank You So Much!
This is the second time I’ve been to this site to fix my laptop. After seeing how you fixed your power supply problem and reading about how John and Jake used a $2.99 dc power jack from Radio Shack I embarked on my own repair and fixed it.
Thanks So Much!
August 20th, 2008 at 10:52 am
Fred Fisher,
There is a link to the disassembly guide in this post, right under the third picture.
August 20th, 2008 at 10:46 am
Great Site! Need help, Laptop is Toshiba A75-S231. The glowing plastic ring around the on/off switch has dislodged from it’s mounting inside the laptop. I can still turn the computer on by pushing on the actual on/off button that sits mormally under the glow housing. How do I get to the underside of the panel to reposition the glow housing and/or epoxy it back into place?
Thank you,
Fred Fisher