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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September 18th, 2007 at 7:36 am
Gdisk error message:
My A60 Problems Part 3:
Bought a refurbed test motherboard, and a 200 pin memory expansion.
Installed – booted up. Started out well.
Then put recovery disc in:
Got gdisc error message
told to power down – any ideas?\
Thanks much.
Paul
September 17th, 2007 at 10:26 pm
dick olson,
You cannot upgrade the video card on a Satellite A60/A65 laptop, period.
September 17th, 2007 at 7:25 pm
i have an A65-s1065 and it ran really bad with XP but when i put vista on it – over the same hard drive, it really works good w/ this upgrade. i have a sticker showing an ATI graphics card but it shows up as just having a standard no name graphics card and it looks ok but i would like to get a better card to work better w/ the vista – any suggestions – thanks
September 12th, 2007 at 2:06 am
I also have an A60 with problems.
After a year or 2 my toshiba wouldn’t start up anymore.
It just produces a tone and then it shuts of after a 3 seconds.
I found out after opening the laptop that the video fan (little fan in the picture) is not working.
I looked for replacement parts, but found almost everything except the videofan.
Anybody got some tips to get my laptop running again?
September 6th, 2007 at 9:20 pm
My experience of this model says that it is probably one of the worst laptops ever made, contrary to Toshiba’s marketing claim that its “designed to perfection” or whatever. The software that Toshiba loads along with the Windows XP only makes it worse. A lesson I have learnt is to stay away from Toshiba altogether.
September 6th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
Many thanks for all this help, its proved invaluable!
I had the classic memory problem and figured I didn’t have much to lose so I took the whole thing apart and managed to get the 8 RAM chips off the board.
I found a small craft knife was best to simlpy cut the legs off the chips and then used a soldering iron to remove the remaining bits of the leg and tidy up the connections.
After this I just put the whole thing together again and hey presto!
Many thanks to this guide
September 5th, 2007 at 9:50 am
I put the chip in but when I turn the machine on there is a loud alarm sound and it shuts down in less than 10 seconds. Thoughts?
August 25th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
George,
Congratulations! I’m glad that Justin’s suggestion worked for you.
All PC2100 DDR266 1GB memory modules should work fine. Also you can use a PC2700 DDR333 module, but it will run at PC2100 speed (266MHz). I would go with known brands as Kingston, Corsair, Crucial, etc…
What memory should I use for upgrading my notebook computer?
August 25th, 2007 at 10:31 am
Having issue with powerpoint not showing on TV monitor even after S video cable is OK.
August 22nd, 2007 at 2:11 pm
Hi,
First off I would like to say that this website proved really helpful to me. I was one of the unlucky people that came across on all the three problems that usually occur to an A60.
First problem was overheating. I just blew compressed air as described and I keep doing it quite often and ever since no problem with that.
Second problem was the jack. Soldering got loose I opened the laptop and resolded three times but it was keeping on getting loose.. Last time I decided to scratch the side of the plastic of the jack that touches the motherboard in order to increase the length of the two pins of the jack that are soldered. Futhermore, I scratched some metal of the metallic holder that holds the jack in its position in order to icrease as well the lenght of the four pins of the metallic holder that are soldered to motherboard. The result was really good and the connection of the jack to the motherboard is much stronger.
Last came the memory. I was keep on getting weird lines and dots when computer was booting (which sometimes would disappear if I was pushing at the area of the laptop between the keyboard and the mouse pad) plus blue screens with different errors when logging to Windows. I tried diafus suggestion (Comment 52) after testing the memory with Memtest86+ utility (the memory test utility that can be found on Microsoft’s site couldn’t find any errors for my memory) without any memory in the extension slot. I was getting errors above 277 MB. I installed a 256 MB memory in the extension slot so I set the MAXMEM value at the Boot.ini equal to 533 MB but no luck. Even tried to set it up to 256 MB and less, hoping that the memory chips that would be used would be from the additional memomy chipset only, but again no luck. So I followed Justin’s suggestion (Comment 23) and unsoldered the 8 memory chips from the motherboard. After that I am using my 256 MB memory in the extension slot, the computer is slow but stable.
I am planning to get a 1 GB memory chipset installed to the extension slot. Does anybody know if all the SO-DIMM memories that are on the market now and can be used in the current laptops, would work with A60?
Many Thanks