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 13th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Marleen,
I would run diagnostics tests for the memory module (Memtest86+) and hard drive (Hitachi DFT). I linked to both utilities in the sidebar.
It’s possible you have bad memory or hard drive.
October 13th, 2008 at 9:17 am
I have a Satellite A60, my issue is not being able to install 0S with recovery Cd. Toshiba said my original was probably bad, so I purchased a new one from them.
no when running the program to reinstall OS and drivers it immediately stops and throws the following error.
File \i386\system32\KDCOM.DLL could not be loaded. The eroor code is 4
Setup cannot continue. Press any key to exit.
Any info would be great to get this thing running again;
October 12th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
jus,
Do you just keep adding fresh solder on the connectors without removing the jack?
In you want to fix it for a long time you’ll have to:
1. Unsolder the power jack.
2. Clean contacts on the motherboard and jack.
3. Solder the power jack back in place.
Here’s power jack repair procedure.
Or you may consider relocating the jack outside the laptop case.
October 12th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
Johnny R,
Run system memory and hard drive tests, you can use Memtest86+ and Hitachi drive fitness test. It’s possible you have bad RAM or faulty hard drive.
October 12th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Gerbil Waster,
Are you sure the small fan is not working? I believe the small fan (North bridge fan) turns on very rarely.
Do you experience any particular problem with your laptop or asking just in case?
October 10th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
Power Jack on Satellite A65 is very bad every time I fix the same it comes off after few days again and again I am looking for some other solution if any one can suggest
October 8th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Hi I have a Toshiba A65 and when I turn it on it doesn’t start windows it just says loading windows and right after that it comes back to the Toshiba logo and it goes like that. I tried to use the recovery CD but it doesn’t seems to work, it happens the same thing. Before having that problem the laptop showed a blue screen saying that it had a problem with the virtual memory, so I shut it down. Right after that is when the problem started. Is the memory screwed up? Please help me.
October 7th, 2008 at 7:41 am
Hello,
I have an A60 and just like others on this forum, the small fan has stopped!
Since I wasn’t aware of this forum b4, I replaced it, having in mind to replace the thermal grease on both the cpu and the graphics card.
Still nothing :/ not working :S
So here’s my question, could the fan controller on the board be busted? If so, what can I do? I was on the verge of making an “y” from the cpu fan controller!
Is that possible to do, can the controller support both fans? Is it even necessary?
I’ll w8 for some answer and while I’m at it, just wanna thank u for the knowledge u’v been sharing!
Take care!
September 27th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
Joe T,
I think it’s possible but I don’t know the spot of the top of my head. The cooling fan requires DC5V. You’ll have to find it with a multimeter.
September 24th, 2008 at 5:32 am
Hi;
I was hoping you could give me a bit of advice.
I was replacing the fan in my daughters Toshiba A65 S126 Satellite laptop. When attempting to disconnect the male
pin from the female pin that is connected to the circuit board, the female pin broke off the circuit board.
I tried soldering the fan directly to that point on the board but there isn’t enough contact material
remaining on the board to do so. Is there some place on the board that I can directly wire the fan into? I
don’t care if it runs at high speed whenever the laptop is on. Any ideas as to how to jerry rig this fan would
be very much appreciated.
Thanks Joe