Let’s talk about problems typical for Toshiba Satellite A60 and A65 notebooks. Do you own one of these laptops? Is it working fine for you?
Here are some typical issues I’ve notices with this model.
1. First of all – overheating
Does your laptop shuts down without any reason when you ran CPU intensive programs? If yes, then most likely it happens because the laptop overheats. It happens because overtime the heatsink gets clogged with dust. A layer of dust collects between the cooling fan and the heat sink (dashed line on the picture) and heat produces by the processor gets trapped inside the laptop. As a result of that, the processor overheats and the laptop shuts down.
There are two different way to clean the heat sink and fan in these models:
- Buy a can of compressed air or find an air compressor and blow off the heat sink through the air intakes on the bottom of the laptop.
- Remove the keyboard (steps 5-9) and you’ll get an access to the cooling fan. Blow off dust from the fan and the heat sink.
In some cases the laptop overheats because of defective cooling fan. The fan should start working as soon as you power up the laptop. If the fan will not star, most likely it’s bad and must be replaced. You can find a new heat sink cooling fan for Satellite A60 and A65 notebooks by the following part number: V000042110.
2. Defective onboard memory
Here’s another common problem – bad onboard memory. This memory is integrated into the motherboard and if it goes bad you’ll have to replace the entire motherboard.
If your laptop starts with some weird characters or lines of dots on the screen, most likely you have a faulty onboard memory. If you test the laptop with an external monitor, you’ll see the same defective video on the external monitor too. You can test the onboard memory with Memtest86+ utility. Remove any external RAM modules and run the memory test. If the onboard memory fails, you’ll have to replace the motherboard.
The integrated memory module is located close by the memory extension slot, under the foil.
UPDATE: If you have bad memory, you should read comment 93 submitted by Daniel on September 28th, 2007.
3. Last but not least – power jack issue.
With Satellite A60 and A65 notebooks this problem is not as common as with Satellite M30X, M35X, A70 and A75, but it’s still a problem. Overtime, the power jack might get loose and the positive pin stops making a good contact with the motherboard anymore. As a result, the laptop switches to the battery power even though the power adapter is still plugged in. Usually you can temporally fix the problem by adjusting the power adapter plug on the back of the laptop, but after some time the problem reappears.
In this case you’ll have to disassemble the laptop, remove the motherboard and resolder the power jack. I’m buying new power jacks here.
Do you experience the same problems or you have another issue with your Satellite A60 or A65 notebook? Please share your experience.
Instructions for replacing laptop power jack yourself
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October 9th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
I was really happy to find this forum. I have an A65 that had the lines across the screen. Upon reading the earlier comments, I removed what I thought was all the onboard RAM. But I thought the 4 chips on the bottom of the motherboard were all the chips. After reassembling the laptop, I had the same problem. Then upon reading all the post, I realized there were 4 more chips on the top of the board. I removed those last night. I have a 256MB chip in the external slot. But now the laptop won’t even POST. The screen never turns on. Is it confused because of the missing RAM it would have used for video? Or maybe I just accidentally fried a transistor while desoldering… I’d appreciate any insight anyone might have.
October 2nd, 2007 at 2:51 pm
I have Toshiba model Satellie A60. I haave a problem that when I turn on the power switch it does’nt start and there is no display. Few days before having this problem, it used to show my 40G hard is full but I have hardly 1G data. Is it a virus proble? How can I fix this? I have tried cycling the power several times.
September 29th, 2007 at 10:13 am
Hey Daniel,
Thank you for your comment. I mentioned it in the post. I don’t want this information to get buried.
September 28th, 2007 at 5:30 am
I have a Toshiba Satellite A 60 which works on the battery but does not work on the AC adaptor. It is too costly for me to replace the mother board (It has a problem). i want to charge the battery using a home made charger.
I don’t know to which of the battery terminals i should give power supply to charge the battery & i don’t know which of the battery terminals are for the supply current.
Please tell me how to connect the battery to a home made battery charger.
Please help me.
September 28th, 2007 at 4:45 am
My dauther’s laptop Toshiba A60 was useless for year because of bad onboard memory. There were vertical lines on the display and Windows failed to boot. Only some DOS-like applications were able to run. I used QuickTech 5.51, found on an 2005 multibootCD, to test the onboard memory. It showed stuck MSB (most-significant-bit) errors. Search for a motherboard replacement showed very high prices, so I shelved the A60 to wait for better times.
Until last week, when read Justin’s comments #19 and #23, as well as George’s #81 post. Removal of the 8-chips onboard RAM costed me $5 at the nearby computer service. Plugged 512MB 200-pin SO-DIMM DDR333 in the spare slot and voila!
Everything now works perfectly. Thnaks this site and Justin.
September 21st, 2007 at 6:33 pm
Does anybody know what component is located at or near C591 on an A60 or A65 motherboard? This on the bottom of the board, looking from the rear, it is to the left of a metal bracket. Mine is gone.
Jerry
September 21st, 2007 at 6:31 pm
C561 is located next to the ram slot. It’s probably a CMOS reset.
Jerry
September 18th, 2007 at 7:36 am
Gdisk error message:
My A60 Problems Part 3:
Bought a refurbed test motherboard, and a 200 pin memory expansion.
Installed – booted up. Started out well.
Then put recovery disc in:
Got gdisc error message
told to power down – any ideas?\
Thanks much.
Paul
September 17th, 2007 at 10:26 pm
dick olson,
You cannot upgrade the video card on a Satellite A60/A65 laptop, period.
September 17th, 2007 at 7:25 pm
i have an A65-s1065 and it ran really bad with XP but when i put vista on it – over the same hard drive, it really works good w/ this upgrade. i have a sticker showing an ATI graphics card but it shows up as just having a standard no name graphics card and it looks ok but i would like to get a better card to work better w/ the vista – any suggestions – thanks