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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April 25th, 2009 at 5:06 am
@ 294
i tried that, but desoldering only the upper four modules didn’t make it boot. i had to desolder the lower four modules to. during that process i touched one small resistor with my soldering iron and i killed it. when i power on, the blue light comes on and then after a few seconds it turns of. no boot, no post nothing.
i also had a second one, i did the same proces. i desoldered the first chip, which appeared to be enough to get it working. after desoldering the first chip the rest of the chips weren’t recognized anymore. i installed xp and it worked fine. the next day, it didn’t post 9 out of 10 times. the one time it did post, i got the familiar stripes during the toshiba screen. so i desoldered the chips in pairs (two by two on each side) to find out which ones were faulty. i ended up needed to desolder them all, after which it ran fine for a short time. now, it again, does not post. sometimes 1 / 100 it does post, but once again the familiar stripes during the toshiba screen (now all onboard memory is taken off and i am booting from a 256 mb memory module. i tried 2 different modules, both same problem). i cleaned up all the old soldering of the legs of memory chips on the mainboard, but still no luck…. any thoughts on either laptop 1 or 2 is appreciated
April 23rd, 2009 at 1:34 am
@296 – Buy a new laptop? You cooked it.
@294 – My experience suggests the easiest memory to get to towards the bottom of the case on an A60 / A65 is the higher mem. And the memory facing towards the keyboard is lower in the memory map. I say this because removing the first 4 chips I found still would not allow my laptop to boot to diags.
Your milage may vary- this makes sense to me.
If you are in doubt, get a 1Gb mem module (PC2100 DDR at 266MHz or faster) and take out all the 8 onboard chips. I would put the protective foils back with the copper facing out towards you again just as you found it. Or tape over the empty memory spots with black electrical tape to avoid shorts on the address pins.
Worked for me! -R.
April 23rd, 2009 at 1:14 am
I just repaired an A60 Toshiba with this same problem. Screen Black, no boot, and would beep with the F10 F11 and Caps Lock lights lit – and then shutdown. Hard Disk was good, no corruption.
Couldn’t get any diagnostics or tests.
First desoldered 4 chips on bottom of Motherboard – this was easier to get to, they are under a copper foil that you have to peel up. I find it easuer to just cut the legs on the top of one side of he chip with a very sharp blade and then wiggle the other side to break it clean. You can then remove the legs with a small wattage iron (12w-15w I suggest). Keep the tip clean!
This didn’t fix the problem and at forst I was worried. Then I removed the complete motherboard as I had nothing to loose- flipped it over and did the next 4 chips on the other side.
On adding a 512 MB SODIM memory to the expansion slot, success! The laptop boots XP and runs perfectly.
I used Bytestor DDR 266MHz PC2100 – which was very cheap to get compared with a replacement laptop.
And in respnose to other questions, you can run it without the Battery installed and just on the AC adaptor.
April 21st, 2009 at 7:11 am
Continue from 295: Thanks to all the people who post about the memory on board problem and the rootcause of the isapnp.sys I could not know that the video memory was causing my computer not to reboot specially after reading microsoft office help about windows problem not a HW problem. Well my computer is still running after I clean the memory chips and resolder (reheating) each terminal searching to fix a solder joint issue not only that I was new to this memory issues and when I bought the external memory I bought a DDR2 I when to the store (Best buy) and I got a DDR memory which was twice expensive: Kingston® 512MB PC-2700 333MHz DDR Notebook Memory Module. I try it once and I got the Toshiba logo and the Windows logo and then it got the traces on the screen again and freeze I panic!!! so I remove the external memory and restart again and without issues it works with the internal memory of 191 Megas so I clean the connector to plug the external memory with pressure air and put back the Kingston chip and reboot and my surprise: IT WORKS!!! so I went to start-settings-control panel-system and yes I got 1.18 GB of RAM!!! Y work several ours without issues I even reconfigure my laptop to use less virtual memory on the harddrive without issues. Its feels like having a new computer again! Thanks to all of you. I am not fan of writing just dig out what I need surfing around but I make a promise to myself of sharing this info if it works so I am taking my time to post this here. Thanks to all Hope you all can fix your problems!!!
April 20th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
I did all the steps for resolder the power jack, When i conected the laptop everything went right, until some grey smoke came out of the back of the computer, and its death. what should i do??
April 20th, 2009 at 8:24 am
I had also the memory onboard issue (satellite 65). Suddenly my laptop was not booting and showing the error of some dlls missing with showing on the screen some lines and errors. I did tapped between the mouse pad and key board and the lines on the screen got corrected (following this blog suggestion). I reboot and I could enter windows. I decided to open the laptop after I was able to save my HD. I wanted to remove the internal memory. however before of removing the memory I just remove the protection cover and with alcohol I cleaned the eight chips and then I heat each pin with a solder pointer to melt again the solder pad of each pin thinking about a solder joint issue. I have been working with the laptop so far two days without getting the memory problem maybe I just got luck but maybe this is the rootcause not the memory but the solder joints… So my advice is that before replacing any cheap just review the pins (visual inspection or with possible a microscope) and resolder any pin with seems to have a joint issue or resolder all its possible the memory chips are ok and it is just the pins not having proper contact. BEcarefull of creating shortcuts to the pins!!!
However I didnt had lucky to install the external memory. I bought a 1 Giga card but it was not entering into the slot (not perfectly alligned) so I cut the plastic internally to make it fit but when I plug it in I loose video signal. I do not know If my connector got damaged or the memory is not for my laptop or I need to do something else. Do anyone had same problem and have a solution about the external memory. I got kind frustrated after fixing the issue saving my internal memory but not able to add more memory …
About the location of bad chips I didnt run any software tool but I do believe the chips causing the video lines and this DLLs issue are the two right ones( top and buttom)
294
cj2600 Says:
April 19th, 2009 at 11:20 am
d_v_d,
i have bad memory onboard. how are the chips ranked? i would like to only desolder the bad chip(s), and not desolder all the 512 mb. does anyone know a way to identify which module is bad?
April 19th, 2009 at 11:20 am
d_v_d,
There are 8 chips on the motherboard. I believe 4 chips on one side represent first 256MB and 4 chips on the other side another 256MB. Unfortunately, I don’t know on which side first 256MB are located but I believe one of the guys who did this repair mentioned it in his comments. When you run the memory test and it fails, it shows where it fails. Let’s say it fails at 184MB. It means if you can identify and remove first 4 chips (first 256MB memory), it might fix the problem.
April 19th, 2009 at 2:15 am
question, i have bad memory onboard. how are the chips ranked? i would like to only desolder the bad chip(s), and not desolder all the 512 mb. does anyone know a way to identify which module is bad? with memtest, goldmemory and docmem i do see that the onboard memory is bad, with a bunch of address information. but does anyone know how this information relates to which onboard memory chip. on a previous laptop, i just desoldered all the chips. that off course worked, but this time i would like to save most of the 512 mb memory
April 17th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Solly,
Are you sure about that? If you have a good working laptop you should be able to remove the battery and run it just from AC adapter. If your laptop doesn’t run on AC when the battery is removed, there is something wrong with the motherboard or power jack.
Remove the battery and run the laptop just from the AC adapter.
April 17th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
John,
It depends on your laptop model. All laptops are different. Can you give me the model?