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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July 16th, 2009 at 10:28 am
Thank you for soooo much useful information. My main problem was the system shutting down due to overheating. I did mess with something and tried to fix the system with the recovery disk. The system overheated and I was left with a corrupt win32 (I think this was it.) It kept going back to the same message until I did a search on my mac and found that I could hit sys c and I was able to do a full restore to original settings. I lost all of my information. Do you know any way I can recover programs myself? I no longer have the backup on external hardrive because it took me so long to figure this out and I bought the mac. Just a side note…once the system was reset to factory settings, the fan slowed down and the computer was running cooler. I don’t want to throw the computer away now. I will try to fix the fan/cooling myself…maybe:)
July 15th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
I live in southern Brazil where the climate is hot, and many will have a65 by my hand for the same reason bad memory … but the last, beginning with lines on the screen, via tried memtest86, removed the 8 chips as I had done other times, installed an external module, but now it’s not boot, the screen goes black and is a long beep, 5 on 5 seconds
June 29th, 2009 at 2:21 am
For those who going to throw the motherboard away. Nothing to loose. If you dont like to use the soldering iron. Use a razor blade instead.
I didn’t feel like using the solder iron/heat gun. I pick up a set of razor at Fry’s Electronic (you can also get them at hobby store) i got mine for $6. Cut 1 side of the memory chips and lift up the chip up and down a few time. The other the side also break off perfect (remember to clean off the side that you cut make sure there no contact from the left over memory’s legs).
My laptop is a Toshiba A65-S1062. I remove all 8 onboard memory. and got my laptop to work again. Thanks Justin for your info.
June 27th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
kaleem,
If only some of the keys are not working, most likely you have a bad keyboard. There is not much you can do without replacing the keyboard.
Also, there is a slight chance that the keyboard controller on the motherboard is bad. If that’s the case, you’ll have to replace the motherboard. Fortunately, it’s not a common failure.
As I mentioned before, most likely it’s just a bad keyboard.
June 27th, 2009 at 2:31 am
hello sir,
I have a Toshiba A60 and I had a some problems with its keyboard
some keys are not working. what can i do with it.
please tell me
June 20th, 2009 at 7:50 am
I have had numerous problems with my Satellite A60-106.
Some of the main problems I have fixed were:
- POOR HARD DISC CONNECTIONS due to some form of corrosion on pin contacts causing irregular shutdowns [Solution: I simply wiped laptop connector pins with cue-tip and a bit of electrical connector spray disconnected/reconnected HD a couple of times to 'clean' pins. NOTE: do not spray directly on to HD connectors or on laptop connector, spray on cue-tip then wipe, you may need to completely disassemble laptop to clean connectors properly which is what I needed to do eventually after my first attempt as described above only fixed problem for a few weeks]
- NOISY FAN [Solution: disassembled laptop and cleaned fan fins]
- POWER JACK BROKE This was awkward to fix because the power jack pin broke off inside the power lead connector [Solution: 1. to get broken pin out of lead connector. It was impossible to get pin out with pliers so I drilled 1mm hole in one side of base of cylindrical, metal part of lead connector. With this done I was able to push broken pin out of connector by pushing a curved needle through drilled hole.
2. needed to fix this immediately and since I could not get online to order power jack, I decided to look around my room for spare parts and found just the right material in my closet. Found that the wire from a coat hanger was the perfect diameter to fit the power lead connector so sacrificed a coat hanger to make a new power jack pin. Cut and appropriate piece out, bent the wire into a 'L' shape, pushed the longer side of 'L' through power jack casing (this would connect to power lead) and shorter side of 'L' through hole in motherboard circuit, then proceeded to solder the short side to motherboard ensuring that long side 'centered out' in jack housing, rebuilt laptop and powered up just fine. That's been working fine ever since!]
Pretty much all of the problems I have experienced have been described in some manner on this site. I am disappointed that Toshiba would produce a laptop with such compromised quality. I know that the A60 may not be a ‘top-end’ product but I would not expect simple and basic things like a power jack to fail after a few months from purchase. I still own and use the A60 however, I no longer proudly own it as it has let me down too many times. I do hope that Toshiba have improved their products but as for me I will no longer buy their products in future based on the experiences I have had with this A60 laptop.
Rico
June 10th, 2009 at 3:33 am
I have a Toshiba A60 and I had a lot of problems with it. I remove integrated memory change a power jack and after that laptop works very good for few monts. But last time something happen with a display. It turns red just I start the computer. It is not all red but most of the monitor is covered by red color or red pixels. I fix it for some time when I titen all screws on lcd. but after one or two days the problem comes back. So i thing it’s something in lcd display.It looks like some connection broke inside lcd display. anybody have similar problem? What could it be? How can I fix it?
Sorry for my English… ;P
Thanks,
June 4th, 2009 at 3:13 am
also bought the A60 in 2004. CPU temperatures exceeded 80 degrees celsius. in 2008 it suddenly stopped booting. vertical lines on the screen. i thought the graphics card was gone. i took it in at the toshiba service and got an estimate of around 500 euro. Now i see that people have similar problems here too. Wen i try start it, missing files occur. I let it go, thinking its a lost cause. 7 months later i tried my luck again. Put in the recovery dvd. first tried the expert mode but failed in the process. the i tried the normal mode which formatted the hd. amazingly, the laptop boots, vertical lines are no longer there and everything seems ok.
May 28th, 2009 at 11:28 am
Hello again,
@307
cj2600 Says:
Make sure the external memory module is good and seated properly. Try another module.
I try another module and nothing change. But i´ve noticed that when heated, has a good time on, then start at the first attempt.
What could it be?
Thanks
May 28th, 2009 at 8:28 am
I have a Toshiba A60 128. The keyboard had problem, so ireplaced it with an external one connected via usb port. All was working well
Unfortunately, I have desable in the setup USB keyboard et mouse emulation.
So I can’t ue my PC now.
I think I need to reset setup to default values.
So I tried to reset setup as describe in previous post (by doing a strapping on c561 capacitor). The problem is that I can’t find this capacitor.
Does someboby have more detail about the location of this capacitor?
I have photos of this area that I can send.
Thanks,
Gilles