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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February 16th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Hi,
Many thanks for a very useful and informative site.
I have Toshiba p100 satalite 2.5 years old. Started having graphic problems with xp, thought it was a virus. Colours for some parts of xp went pink. Have tried recovery disc for toshiba, but have now been getting realy poor quality graphics with virticle lines 4 together spread equally accross screen. LCD does not show up on own at the moment, only by external monitor.
Have strpped the machine and cleaned the heat sinks etc as described on this site MANY THANKS FOR THAT.
Is it virus problem effecting recovery area of system, or a chip problem as George in 81 suggests, even with such a new system, or a faulty graphics card.
Each time I have tried to reinstall system, it has bad graphics and a blue screen crash mentioning nv4.mini.sys.
Any experiences or suggestions would be most welcome.
Thanks again.
February 9th, 2009 at 10:00 am
I am having problems with a toshiba satellite A65-S1762 my son removed his hard drive and when he put it back in now keeps getting black screen and when u select any other start mode it just goes back to the beginning again. pls.help….
February 7th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
hello
i´ve a a65-126, with the problem of bad memory, so i tried to fix it taking out the memory chips..but
now when i plug the battery, or when its on, the on-off button and led, flashes inermittently, also the speakers beeps like that.
my laptop is dead??? help please
February 6th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
Hi
I purchase a used Toshiba A60 Motherboard that was suppose to have a power jack problem. Turns out the underside of the motherboard where the postive side comes in on the board has two fried smd parts -L529 and L530 and the copper clad is lifting
off the board. What I needed to know is what are the two smd parts and were can I get them.
Thank you
Robert
February 5th, 2009 at 9:03 pm
Hello,
Thank you’s to all the useful comments and tips I’ve picked
up from this forum. I have the bad memory onboard problem
and I’m wondering if anyone knows in which sequence the
system reads each chip. Memtest is giving me a report of bad
memory at 129 MB. Since each chip is 64 MB, this would
mean that the 3rd chip in the sequence is the bad one. I want
to remove this single chip before I pull all 8 chips or gamble on
removing just 4 chips, and at that which side of the mother-
board to pull them from?
I’m not even sure if the stenciled numbers next to each chip
are the same order as the system addresses/reads them.
Thamk you.
William
mrbargin2001 at yahoo dot com
Any thoughts or suggestions on this I will greatly appreciate.
February 5th, 2009 at 11:40 am
dear reader besides a comment i have a problem with my toshiba a60 sattellite laptop. p iv. 40 gb. 512 installed. 2.8 ghz. cd/dvd rw.
it shuts down within 3 minutes wit fan blowin at a high speed.
it does not start remains switched off if battery is removed i mean no start with a/c adapter without battery support.
if it runs for first 3 minutes it would for seconds when second swithch on.
your site is a great help for the needy, help seekers. thanks
February 3rd, 2009 at 5:59 am
I have a toshiba satelite and the power adapter charges the laptop, but when I try and use the laptop while it is plugged in the screen goes black. Everything else is working properly as I connected it to a monitor and everything is fine. And as long as I am only on battery, laptop works great no blank screen. Ordered new power supply adapter thinking that was the problem, but not. Anyone else having this problem?
January 31st, 2009 at 11:56 pm
something burn in my Satellite A65-s126 and now I have no USB ports – + 5V are there but no data on pin 2 and 3.Device manager seys “This device is working properly”.
10x
January 28th, 2009 at 11:11 am
I just wanted to update what I did to my A65 S126 (comment 266) might help some out.
I removed only the top 4 ram chips that are attached to the motherboard. I used a pencil knife with a new blade and cut the feet on one side and slid the knife under until I could break em off. I then cleaned the feet with the knife so no soldier touch (don’t know if this mattered. I didn’t remove the botton chips only the top 4. I inserted ddr ram 1g and started it up booted and read the new ddr ram. Bad news was that the fan connector broke off the motherboard… I just resoldered it to the Usb port on the side of the computer both are 5volt so I figured it would work and it did. (Also the USB is still functionable, with no surges) Fan runs all the time, but hey… the laptop works again so it was a fair trade off.
I was going to do the bluetooth trick, but I found a Targus bluetooth USB that was super small. Its plugged into the usb that the fan runs off of.
All in one breath…
Peace!
January 27th, 2009 at 12:18 am
Hi
Yes I tried external monitor and the problem is the same. When I first removed the memory chips I only took off 4 and my laptop still would not load windows so I took off the other 4 and now this. One thing ……the computer seems to be working and trying to boot but the screen is going crazy with mottled colours.
Looks like I need a new motherboard……..I will check again for shorts on the connections but I have checked with a powerful magnifying glass and it looks good.
Cheers……..John