I haven’t seen this laptop model for months. We repaired a lot of them some time ago. One of our biggest customers used to have hundreds of these computers and we worked on them until they all went out of warranty. I believe that my disassembly guide for Toshiba Satellite 1200 still could be very useful for many people. We noticed that this model has a lot of problems with video. I believe it happens because a week connection between the system board and the video board. If you experience a video problem, try to reseat the video card. Another very common problem with this laptop model - a broken lid close switch on the LED board. If you laptop doesn’t go to a hibernation mode when you close the display, check if the lid close switch is broken.
During laptop disassembly pay attention on the following moments. The keyboard strip seated very tightly. You have to be very careful when you remove the strip because it has a control board attached to it. The laptop has a lot of screws under the keyboard. When you remove the top cover assembly, do not forget to mark screws. When I disassembled this laptop for the first time, I draw a diagram on the paper for each screw location.
August 27th, 2007 at 8:13 pm
Thanks for the guide. This guide worked for me to disassemble a Satellite 1005 notebook as well. The only difference from what I could see was no wireless card.
August 13th, 2007 at 8:50 am
Amazing amount of effort you’ve put into this - thanks v much for keeping it public.
I have a Toshiba Satellite 3000 X4 (PS301E-000K8-EN) which I’m currently maintaining. The 1200 looks identical and the Toshiba details for the earlier 1xxx series are v similar to the 3000 X4. However, Toshiba offers no listings or support for the 3000 X4. I wondered if anyone who might read this has any further information; is the 3000 X4 another (supported) model, simply rebranded? I’m trying to get as much information as possible together as I intend to upgrade it for a relative.
Thanks in advance.
August 9th, 2007 at 4:39 am
Thanks for the insight, well i have been looking
for a couple of days now for the inverter but compu
ter stores here do not have it in stock.
August 7th, 2007 at 11:09 pm
catnoe,
It’s hard to tell witch one you should replace, you’ll have to test the laptop with a known good inverter. It’s possible that the backlight lamp is still in a good working condition. If you don’t have a test inverter, apparently you’ll have to guess.
August 6th, 2007 at 5:44 pm
hi…thanks very much guys..learned a lot from this site.Anyway i have a toshiba laptop here given by a friend,the screen is dark but i can see the icons.I disconnected the backlight and found out that both ends turned black, which i think needs replacement-the inverter looks innocent though.
Just need advice here,which one should i replace first,the inverter or the backlight tube!
June 5th, 2007 at 9:42 am
Just aquired a Toshiba Satellite 1805-S207. Is it possible to chnage the processor to a faster 370 PGA model?
May 25th, 2007 at 11:26 am
My Toshiba Satellite 1200 wont charge anymore. The bit where you plug the end of the charger cable is broken. How can I fix this? Do I have to take the whole laptop apart to fix this?
Is there any other way to charge this laptop?
I need help. Badly.
April 13th, 2007 at 12:45 am
Thanks for the guide. Now I know where that pesky miniPCI is…
Your guide seems to suggest that the Toshiba Sat 1200 has an internal wifi card; however, there are sets out there that do NOT have wifi by default. Like mine.
For those that do not have wifi, are the antennae thrown inside anyway? Or do I have to source for them somewhere?
March 9th, 2007 at 8:35 pm
I have a Toshiba Satellite 1130, when windows starts up the screen doesn’t go out it just flickers on and off. I took it to a repair shop and they said they couldn’t determine whether it was the inverter or backlight.
I would think that if it were the backlight, it wouldn’t come on at all. Any ideas? I would like to fix it myself, but don’t want to purchase unnecessary parts.
This is a great site!
January 27th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
Ha! My 1105 has a broken hinge on the right side also, that caused the LCD to split. Right now I’m using Duct tape to hold it together.
I call it my Frankentop.
Wonder if this is a design flaw?
January 16th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
i have a satellite 1105 that needs a new hard drive and the right hinge for the lcd is split and broken. your instructions for the 1200 don’t quite hit the mark but are very informative. just wondering if you have similar information for my series laptop.
January 11th, 2007 at 2:47 am
re: 2
cj2600 Says:
March 27th, 2006 at 3:18 pm
“Make sure that the lid close switch is clean. Sometimes it might get stuck, causing the backlight to turn off.”
Many many thanks cj2600 and also the person(s) who set up http://www.laptopka.com/.
I’ve had a troublesome Toshiba Satellite 1000 for some years now. The backlight went off at random times. I carefully checked the sunken close switch and found a very tiny almost invisible piece of what looked like blonde hair in it. (The previous owner who gave me this her “broken” laptop is a young busty blonde). Once removed the backlight has stayed on thus far.
December 30th, 2006 at 5:16 pm
Thanks for your site, my laptop stopped running yesterday , no activity on hard drive and no screen display, so I took my Toshiba 1005-S157 apart and checked all the connections and fired it up, and it seems to work great!
December 30th, 2006 at 12:38 am
Ignore my last post.
After plucking up the courage and actually looking at the detail you placed on the large pop-up images I have stripped my laptop down to the mainboard, located the dodgy solder point, fixed that, rebuilt it and I am up and running.
Thanks to the post here, I have saved myself about AU$200, which I can’t thank you enough for.
Thanks again,
Whytey
December 29th, 2006 at 9:35 pm
I too have the power plug issue on my Aussie Satellite 1000. One small movement near it and laptop will turn off.
I tried to follow the instructions but I don’t seem to be able to remove the bottom from the laptop to look at the power input.
I obviously don’t need to remove the screen etc but do I need to remove the LED panel above the keyboard? Do I need to remove the memory module?
I imagine I only need to remove all the screws on the bottom marked F18 and F6, but there are also some near the exhaust vents on the back. Do they need to be removed also?
Cheers,
Whytey
December 21st, 2006 at 11:58 am
Thanks for the instructions and especially for the great photos. It looks like I will be taking my third-hand 1200 apart sometime soon to replace a bad power input socket. It hasn’t quite died yet, but I’m sure that it will soon enough. Right now it will only charge if you put a little sideways pressure on the plug.
November 28th, 2006 at 3:44 pm
Hi CJ,
I’ve got a Satellite 1130 with a stuck “1″ key (constantly writing “111111111111…”) and was wondering if your guide fits this model as well?
Cheers!
July 27th, 2006 at 9:35 am
Thanks loads - I’m working on my daughter’s Satellite 1005 and the instructions for the 1200 was close enough for me to get it taken apart.
I didn’t completely dismantle it tho because I could not see that I would be able to get to the place I needed… the power plug is wobbly and the power adapter will not connect well enough for the battery to charge and the laptop to stay on. I see from the net that someone else went in and made their plug external.
July 27th, 2006 at 9:22 am
Thanks for your help cj.
July 26th, 2006 at 10:41 pm
Ray,
The tech is right, most likely the drive you installed is not compatible. It’s configured as M/S and you need a CSEL drive, or backwards. Usually you can find how it’s configured on the top of the drive (M/S or CSEL). I found that there are 3 different CD-RW/DVD drives listed for Toshiba Satellite 1800. Here they are:
Toshiba, Part number: P000334460
Panasonic, Part number: P000332320
Toshiba, Part number: P000341670
I think that the best way to replace the drive is to buy a drive that was designed for your model. Try to search on the Internet or look it up on ebay.
Before you buy the drive, contact the seller and make sure if it will work in your laptop.
July 26th, 2006 at 10:04 pm
Nicolas,
You might have a bad FL inverter board. You should try to reseat connectors on the FL inverter, not on the video card. Reseat connectors 3 and 4 pictured on this LCD screen diagram. Also check if the lid close switch is clean and moves freely. A stuck lid close switch might turn off the backlight.
July 26th, 2006 at 8:22 pm
I have a Toshiba satellite #1805-S207 and I was trying to change the dvd/cdrw drive and through some research found your site as I was having trouble figuring out how to remove it. Thanks to you I used your disassembly diagrams and got the drive out very easy.I tryed a to replace it with a sony#crx850e drive. The drive will not do anything and at boot I get an error message that says “error ide1″ and after a minute or so it will boot up to windows but the drive is not showing on devices.I took the drive back to the store and a tech there said that it was a compatabilty issue.Is there a drive that is compatable other than a $300.00 toshiba drive. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
July 17th, 2006 at 2:18 am
Many thanks for this detailed instructions!
I’ve got an S3000-514 which looks identical, screw by screw.
I had the hope, that a proper re-connection of the video-board would enlighten my black screen. But it didn’t
An external monitor is doing well, but the LCD stays black with a very very weak output. The output is correct, but it’s not visible under daylight.
July 4th, 2006 at 5:50 am
Found this whilst looking for instructions for replacing the FL inverter for a Satellite 1000-Z2.
The laptop shown in the display looked close enough that I thought it worth giving these instructions a try, and they worked.
So, thanks for these.
June 13th, 2006 at 10:28 pm
Hey Nigel,
Are you asking about FL inverter board? If yes, then you should be able to replace it yourself. To access the inverter board, you have to remove the LCD screen mask. It would cost you approximately $70-$75 plus shipping. You can search on ebay and find it even cheaper.
June 13th, 2006 at 5:21 am
i would like to know wheather we can change ccfl inverter. if yes how much it cost?
March 27th, 2006 at 4:24 pm
Upon a closer inspection of the inverter I notice a discoloration in the plastic caseing surrounding the actual circuit board. This spot is located on the bottom of the board just to the right of hole that the holding screw closest to the LCD connector passes through. It surrounds a little black chip with 4 prongs connected to the board. It is labeled “u2″ on the board itsself. When seated it would be at the bottom of the display directly below a chip almost exactly twice it’s size labeled “c2″ on the board.
There also is a stain of sorts on the alluminum flashing at the bottom of the display. It runs across pretty much the full bottom edge of the flashing. Kind of a milky look to it combined with what reminds me of what i would see when I launched an old boat of mine and the gas/ oil made a film on the water. Not sure if that is a normal vapor film or what.
March 27th, 2006 at 3:20 pm
Thanks a ton for your time cj. I will try connecting to an external montitor tomorrow. Wish that it was an option I had available to me at the moment, but the only other home computer I have is this Apple I-book
March 27th, 2006 at 3:18 pm
Hey Dustin,
To me your problem doesn’t look like an overheating issue at all. Most likely it is just a failing FL inverter board. Usually you can get the backlight back for a while when you tap a few times on the lid close switch. You can find the switch close to the left LCD hinge. Make sure that the lid close switch is clean. Sometimes it might get stuck, causing the backlight to turn off.
One thing concerns me. You mentioned that you noticed a slight pinkish hue on the screen. It might indicate a problem with the LCD screen. Try to connect your laptop to an external monitor. If you see the same pinkish hue, most likely you have a problem with the video card (it is a separate board in this model). If the external video is fine, then I would suspect the LCD or the video cable connection. In some cases the LCD screen still would be usable because after it warms up the pinkish hue can go away.
March 27th, 2006 at 3:14 pm
I have a Toshiba Satellite 1200. Yesterday, with no prior problems, the display went black. My research landed me here. Thanks to your guides I was able to, maybe a little over cautiously, (or fearfully) reseat the inverter connections. Thank you very much for sharing you wealth of knowledge.
After reassembling the display, I was delighted to find that everything booted normal once again. Sadly, I watched as my efforts vanished into a sea of darkness just after windows explorer started.
It seems that the longer I wait between tests the longer I have a display. I can still , with a lot of effort, see the faint display in the blackness. If anything when the backlight is on I notice a slight pinkish hue on the darker transition screens.
Before I order an inverter I want to be sure that the problem is not some sort of overheating issue or safety shut off for the backlight. I’m probably reading too much into the whole thing. Any insight (or reassurance
you might offer would be greatly appreciated.
Great site….thanks for helping out