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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March 4th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
Abubakar Siddik Lubis,
Maybe you should try Toshiba website?
March 4th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
I need Chipset & AGP drivers for my laptop TOSHIBA A65. How can I get it ?
February 28th, 2008 at 10:45 am
I have successfully removed the (bad) onboard memory from two A65 laptops now with good success.
Tips: Use a small lightly serrated knife and CAREFULLY cut the one side of the chips off, then bend the other side off. Afterwards, use a small soldering iron and quickly ‘scrape’ the pins left towards the middle of where the chip used to be, cleaning the tip often, and making sure the pin remains go OFF the board. There are a lot of small, easily popped off components around the chips, so watch carefully when ‘sawing’ the chips.
Second, VERY IMPORTANT TIP: There is a metal finger bradded onto the bottom case that MUSt be removed. Otherwise, that metal finger will intermittently short to the old memory locaiton. If your laptop works until it is put together/screwed down, you probably missed this.
Go to toshiba and get the ‘chipset and agp’ driver. Not only are they MUCH faster than the old drivers that come with the A65 (or on the restore cd), you can also tell the graphics card to use 32M of memory instead of 64. This makes XP bearable on a single 256MB SODIMM…not great, but a lot better.
There is also a Microsoft Update on the toshiba website to support Prescott P4-M procs. Haven’t played with it yet, but planning to do some proc swaps eventually to see what I can get.
Hope this helps. ;>
February 21st, 2008 at 9:37 am
Mike Gibson,
Remove dust from the heatsink, make sure it’s clean. I think the disassembly process for your laptop will be the same as for a Toshiba Satellite A45. Take a look at the step 4, it shows how you can access the heatsink.
Try replacing the cooling fan first. If replacing the fan doesn’t help, apparently there is a problem with the motherboard.
February 21st, 2008 at 8:27 am
Hello,
I have a Toshiba SPA40 laptop and when i boot it up the fan kicks in the goes off then kicks in again and does this a lot until a cooling error comes up from XP – can you please let me know what this could be – my email address is michael@happyhomes.org.uk
Many thanks
Mike
February 21st, 2008 at 5:18 am
Brendon,
Test the laptop with a know good memory module. It could be just memory related problem.
If you have two modules installed, try removing them one by one and test the laptop with each module separately, find the faulty one.
February 21st, 2008 at 5:12 am
bombalina,
What laptop do you have? It’s possible that your laptop has dedicated video memory. I believe MemTest will not test video memory. That’s why it can pass MemTest even though the video memory is bad.
For testing video memory I use MocroScope utility but it’s not free.
February 21st, 2008 at 5:00 am
Dede,
Did you test the AC adapter? Maybe the adapter is bad? Test it with a voltmeter, make sure the adapter outputs correct voltage.
February 19th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
hi i have a toshiba satellite a30. ive had it for 3 years now and it was running fine, but the other day, if just crashed. so i turned it off, and now when i turn it back on, i can hear the fan going, but the screen just stays blank, even when i connect it to an external monintor, the screen still doesnt work
February 15th, 2008 at 11:08 am
Hi,
Thanks all of you for posting all those useful tips. I have question if those “weird lines and dots” when computer is booting could be coused by failure of additional memory module? I’ve run MemTest without additonal RAM and it passed, no errors. Thanks in advance.