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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December 28th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Are both fans supposed to run continuously when the laptop is turned on? There are two fans but I can’t tell in your article if one or both are supposed to run continuously when the laptop is powered on. Thanks!
December 23rd, 2009 at 8:48 am
I was wondering if anyone has any experience replacing the ATA6 IDE hard drive that came stock with my A65-S1065 system with a SATA HDD using an IDE to SATA converter. Is there enough room to house the converter in the HDD bay? If someone has done this, did it work? I’d like to replace the 4200rpm drive with a 7200rpm SATA drive
Most of the IDE-SATA adapters are driverless, but I’m not sure if the BIOS on the A65-S1065 will allow or recognize a SATA drive.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
December 22nd, 2009 at 2:38 pm
I have a toshiba laptop and updated the bios when I shut down unexpectedly staying black screen with a beep and not boot the operating system
which do you recommend?
November 30th, 2009 at 12:38 am
280
Charles Says:
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.
I have the same problem, anyone know hot to solve it? It is a virus?
November 29th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Having trouble loading Win XP
November 28th, 2009 at 9:43 pm
Has anyone tried swapping the onboard RAM for chips from a larger stick? I found a 256MB desktop DDR DIMM with the same Samsung chips the A65’s use, single-sided, 8-chips. I think I found an 8-chip 1GB PC-2100 desktop DDR DIMM with Elpida chips from Geeks.com for about $30. I’ve gotten my A65 fixed by reflowing the Radeon 7000 BGA, and I could add another 1GB in the one SODIMM slot, but I’m curious to see whether I could hit 2GB by simply swapping chips. I have an IR rework station and wouldn’t mind trying it myself on my own hardware, but I don’t have compatible chips and wouldn’t want to spend money on simple exploratory surgery. Besides, I also don’t know whether the Elpida 1GB stick is 8-chip or 16-chip.
Thanks. benvanderjagt AT yahoo.com
November 19th, 2009 at 2:03 am
A-60, with bad integrated memory.
After remove them all memory Cis, my note is fine, like new one.
Thanks a lot for those informations.
Luiz Alemar (Brazil)
November 18th, 2009 at 12:06 am
I have same problem of on board memory faulty in A60 after testing with memorytest software . so I go to mobile repairing shop and again resolder all the memory chip with small tipped solder .After that my laptop working fine . Thanks for danial comment no 93
November 14th, 2009 at 11:41 am
simon Bullock,
I guess you are asking about the CMOS battery? You’ll have to remove the motherboard. The CMOS battery is soldered to the motherboard.
You can remove the keyboard as it shown in steps 1-8 here: http://www.irisvista.com/tech/.....tA65_1.htm
Do not disconnect the keyboard from the motherboard, simply flip it upside down and place on the palm rest.
When the keyboard is removed, you’ll get an access to the cooling fan.
You can clean the fan with compressed air. Blow air inside the fan until all dust is gone. It is not necessary to disassemble the entire laptop.
November 14th, 2009 at 4:06 am
Hi
I have a satellite SA-60 129 (at least I think that’s correct).
The battery seems to have died…is it easy to replace?
Also…it gets very hot…is it easy enough to take apart and clean… for a moron like me?
Great site btw.