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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November 21st, 2007 at 7:36 pm
Hello,
Even my A60 is a Pentium 4 at 2.4 GHz, my RAM is only 191MB. I hardly use my laptop because it freezing very often. I wonder if I’ll put more RAM, does my problem solves?
Thank you in advance.
November 16th, 2007 at 10:03 am
The ribbon bacle has come off which controls the LEDS and the touchpad. If you remove the plate at the rear of the keyboard. Then remove the two keys securing the keyboard. Then check the ribbon cable to the right of the Keyboard cable about 2cm wide.
good Luck
November 16th, 2007 at 3:05 am
Hi all!
My laptop (Satellite A60) overheats, so I wanted to blow off the dust. I removed the keyboard (as written in steps 5-8), but there was no dust there! I think, it’s somewhere deeper. Maybe something else should be removed from there (the fan, …). If you succeded (practically!) in this, please tell me what to do.
Thanks in advance.
November 14th, 2007 at 8:53 am
I have an old A60 and the touchpad is not workinag as the 5 front leds dont. I have never tried to open it because it was a gift from a nieve which bought a new HP notebook and gave this old one to me. I would like to repair it but do not know first if I should do some test . Any idea on this ?
November 14th, 2007 at 5:58 am
I have a toshiba A60. When the charger is plugged in it shorts out. It runs fine when using a charged battery. I removed the jack but the power to ground contacts on the motherboard are still shorting out. Has anyone got a cure for this problem? Thanks
November 13th, 2007 at 2:34 am
Hi all!
I have a toshiba a60 from a friend and I can’t figure out what’s wrong with it. I know it was overheating for quite a long time, and turning off because of this. Then I advised my friend to change the CPU level from the power options to a lower one so that it won’t overheat, and it worked. But it the started to have other problems. The screen was swithcing off by itself, or having an image as if there were no video drivers and all sorts of errors given by the video card. so i decided to reinstall the windows on it, however I can’t do it since it switches off by itself during the process. I have tried to use the ultimate boot CD and do a Memtest, but i can’t do it either, since again it doesn’t stay on as long as the test takes place.. reading this forum I can see that most likely it is the memory that has gone bad due to overheating… What do you think? Help please..
Thanks!
November 7th, 2007 at 7:24 am
Horror of horrors.
turned laptop on yesterday (2 days after carrying out brain surgery on motherboard) there was a high pitched beeping and machine turned itself off.
Not had chance to investigate yet but wonder if there is a piece of rogue solder inside the motherboard?
November 5th, 2007 at 8:40 pm
I can confirm the removal of the onboard memory fixing the problem. I bought an a65 s1065 from a friend. It had bad onboard memory, me and my brother removed the onboard ram. Through a stick in the expansion slot, and bingo, it booted up in Ubuntu just fine.
November 5th, 2007 at 3:38 am
*********************READ THIS********************************
I am completely amazed. After confirming damaged onboard memory I removed the onboard memory and installed a 512Mb memory module (cost a whopping £24) I only wish I had the courage to buy a 1gig module now (not knowing whether my surgery would work or not). When removing the onboard memory I did develop a useful technique which made life easier:
TIPS:
1. When removing the chips I cut down one side of the chip first by scoring with a craft knife over and over again(as close to the chip as possible) until all the legs were cut.
2. then slid the craft knife under the chip and bent it up so it was attached only on one side.
3. By gently bending up and down (without twisting) the legs snapped off the body of the chip and were left in the solder. However, they were so perfectly spaced they didnt need taking off at all(just like big lumps of solder really) so this meant I only had to clean up half of the connections.
4.The side of the chips which were cut were much messier and needed removing. – I got a 99p craft knife with a sharp point and individually bent each leg up and down until they snapped off. It was a bit laborious but after all better than binning the laptop.
5. As the technique above wasnt used from the start I did use a soldering iron to start with. To get rid of excess solder I had something called “copper braid”. Its a small ribbon made out of plaited copper wire. You put the copper braid on the solder then put the soldering iron on top. The copper braid soaks up the excess solder by capillary action.
I DID SAY SEVERAL TIMES WHILST CARRYING OUT BRAIN SURGERY ON MY MOTHERBOARD THAT IT WOULD DEFINATELY NOT WORK AGAIN. BUT IT DOES (AND WITH TWICE AS MUCH MEMORY NOW!!)
GOOD LUCK
when removin
November 5th, 2007 at 1:11 am
does anybody knows what component is locate on the left beside r530 bottom of thin heatsink a60 motherboard? its blow up.