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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January 26th, 2009 at 9:19 pm
John,
Did you test the laptop with an external monitor? Maybe the video cable is not plugged correctly?
Take a closer look at the onboard memory connectors, maybe you accidentally bridged them while unsoldering the onboard RAM chips.
James (comment 266) also removed all 8 chips and apparently his repair was successful.
January 25th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Hi
I removed very carefully the 8 onboard memory chips from my a60 and inserted 1gig mem in expansion slot. Now when powering up I just get thick white vertical lines on screen with fiickering horizontal “flashes”. Any Ideas??
January 18th, 2009 at 9:58 am
Hi I don’t know what happen when I insert my recovery cd. I got it running and it restored everything but when it was finish and it restart. It showed me a error black page. Did I do something wrong? Please help me
January 18th, 2009 at 4:00 am
i have toshiba satellite A60/A65
i Have Proplem With Dvd Rom
How Can I Boot From USB Hard Disk To Setup Windows.
January 16th, 2009 at 11:02 am
I had the memory issue … I used a utility knife to cut the feet on the top 4 and inserted ram in the available slot and the laptop booted perfectly. FYI there are 8chips 4on the top and 4 on the bottom.
Thanks justin and this site.
January 8th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
I have to change the HDD (MK4025GAS – 2.5″ 4500rpm 8ms IDE) on my Toshiba Satellite A60 but I’ll never try a Toshiba hard drive (they said 300.000 live hours for this HDD … I don’t understand where is the joke ? Mine . was died after aprox. 10.000 hours …) .
If somebody could give me an alternative solution …an equivalent for my MK4025GAS (if more than 40Go, no problem!)
thks guys!
Adrian
January 7th, 2009 at 6:05 am
Hi
I have a toshiba satellite m40 184 laptop and i have this problem:
when i try to shut down or restart the machine, windows stops at windows is shutting down and freezes there , i have to manually shut it down. after this if i try to turn it on it starts but only a black screen appears and nothing. if i leave it to cool it starts and works whole day without any problem even with cpu 100%. the cpu temp is max 68 and everything seems ok, but if i try to restart or shut it down i have to leave it to cool for 20 min and then starts again. i tryed reinstalling windows but it gives me an error that my pc is not acpi complient ,but it is , when i enter windows in control panel hardware manager it says acpi is ok. i recovered the hard disk using the toshiba recovery dvd and still the problem remains. i tryed to reflash the bios but the stupid program says i have the latest version and i cant reflash.
do you have any suggestion, what could be the problem? i cleaned the cpu cooling system, but still have the same problem.
for me there is a chip (bios or i dont know) that is over heating and stops tha acpi but i dont know how to fix this?
any ideas?
thanks in advance.
January 3rd, 2009 at 4:25 pm
Jonny,
First of all, try reconnecting the DVD drive. Remove it from the laptop and install back. Take a look inside the connector, make sure there is no dirt in there.
Try booting the laptop from a bootable CD (windows installation CD, live Linux CD, etc…) If the laptop boots from the bootable CD, most likely it’s just a software related problem and there is nothing wrong with the drive.
If that’s the case, you can try this method: CD/DVD drive stopped reading all CDs and DVDs.
January 3rd, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Hi there,
After changing my DC Jack and putting my toshiba A60 back together again.. the dvd rom drive is not recognized in my computer and its not showing in the device manager.
The light comes on and when there is a disc in the drive it spins but shows nothing in windows..
Please HELP …………..
January 3rd, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Sorry misspelt my e-mail……….. on last comment