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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September 21st, 2008 at 11:12 pm
Moe,
Yep, this model runs hot. Also, overtime thermal grease looses its thermal conductivity and has to be replaced. Next time when you clean the heat sink, try replacing thermal grease.
I’ve seen many Satellite A60/65 with a Pentium CPU inside. They have the same cooling module as laptops with Celeron CPUs, so installing a Pentium chip shouldn’t mess things up. I cannot tell you if your particular motherboard supports Pentium CPU, most likely it does. You’ll have to try.
Not sure about that, I don’t work with desktops at all. I know that P4 laptop and desktop CPUs look the same, but I’m not sure if the pin layout is the same.
September 21st, 2008 at 7:49 am
cj2600,
The thermal grease was sticky actually, and so far the laptop hasn’t shut down it just gets real hot. I guess thats natural for this model? Do you advise sticking a pentium 4 chip in instead or would that just heat up more and mess things up? I saw the same laptop with a pentium 4 and it had the RAM problem, though of using its processor.
Finally, do some desktop P4s use the same socket type as this laptop?
September 20th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Moe,
Did you notice if thermal paste was dried out? If it was, maybe it’s time to apply new thermal grease.
If your laptop doesn’t shut down, probably that’s OK. Games consume a lot of CPU power and make them hot really fast.
September 16th, 2008 at 7:57 am
Hey thanks for the reply cj2600, i have another question for you:
As soon as I start a game emulator or so the fan starts getting loud and it keeps on going and doesnt stop even if i quite the application…it only stops when i put a bigger fan near the air intakes underneath. Now I opened up the laptop when i desoldered the chips and i accidentally removed the heatsink and saw that there was some thermal paste on the CPU so i left it as it is (didnt reply) and re-bolted the heatsink then i desoldered the bad memory and put the laptop back together, but im worried about the heating issue…could it be that i must reapply the thermal paste? I’ve recently used a hoover to blow off the dust from the heatsink should I do it again? Oh yea one more thing i downloaded this temperature monitoring app called “SpeedFan’ and it reads two temperatures, one is the HDD and it is usually around 40-42 C and another is ACPI and is usually 50 and sometimes hits 60 C , but it is alwlays constant.what is this temp. could it be the CPU? Please let me know.
September 15th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
Moe,
Satellite A60/A65 has one memory slot available for upgrades. You can install up to 1GB memory module into this slot. You should use PC2100 or PC2700 module.
September 13th, 2008 at 7:10 am
Hi,
I just fixed my A60 suffering from bad on-board RAM, and it was quite easy to do so actually. It had been shelved for over a year, but I stumbled upon this forum and read justin’s and other people’s comments, sure enough de-soldering the on-board RAM and using the extension RAM worked like magic. I went to a friend who had some sort of a hot air soldering tool which is very quick and easy to use…managed to remove all 4 memory chips in under 1 mintue! I have only 198 RAM now (extension) but its working again, planning to upgrade it to 1GB. Does anyone know if it is possible to upgrade to 1G RAM on this model? It is a 2.8 Celeon by the way which is dog slow.
September 9th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Rich,
I don’t know. No one reported any success or failure doing that for a Satellite A70/A75.
If you decided to remove the onboard memory and it works well for you please let us know. Your experience will be very useful for all users with the same problem and model.
September 9th, 2008 at 1:02 am
I also have bad on board RAM. Googling has led me here. I have a A70/75 Toshiba Satellite with 512 onboard. I’m wondering if removing that RAM(Via the surgery method mentioned here) & just running with RAM in the expansion slot would also work on the latter model.
September 2nd, 2008 at 9:09 pm
michel,
In a Toshiba Satellite A60/A65 the CMOS battery is soldered on the motherboard. You can see the CMOS battery in the step 17 of the disassembly guide. The battery is located on the left side of the motherboard between the dial-up modem card and ATI chip.
September 2nd, 2008 at 10:25 am
Hello
I want to how to replace the battery CMOS.
Because I can’t locate it!
j’aimerais savoir comment changer la pile CMOS
Thinks you foir yours answer