Toshiba Satellite M35X. How to fix most common laptop problems.
Toshiba Satellite M35X is a very popular model in the United States. In general, most Toshiba Satellite M35X laptops suffer from the same problems. Here’s a disassembly guide.
Improperly grounded top cover assembly. If the top cover assembly wasn’t grounded properly, then laptop may lock up or freeze up when you touch it in the speaker area. It happens because of a static electricity discharge. This problem was fixed on some laptops, but still there are a lot of laptops with unmodified top cover assembly. This problem should be covered under warranty even if you laptop is not under warranty anymore.
Poorly designed DC-IN power jack on the system board. Overtime, the DC power jack gets disconnected from the system board. If it happens, you will experience a problem with charging the battery or the laptop may not start at all.
Read more:
Toshiba Satellite M35X and A75 power jack and battery charge problem.
Toshiba Satellite 1900 laptop looses power and shuts down without warning.
Laptop CPU overheating. It is a very common problem for some Toshiba laptops. If a laptop CPU overheats, then the laptop shuts down without by itself without any reason. Read more:
Why my Toshiba laptop suddenly shuts down by itself without warning?
You can use the disassembly guide to take apart Toshiba Satellite M35X notebook and repair it yourself. Do not open the case if your laptop is still under warranty.
Need spare parts for your laptop? Search here by the laptop model and part name or number.
October 23rd, 2007 at 1:06 am
Z
I had the same problem with my M-35X keyboard. If you have an extra USB keyboard around, plug it into your laptop to see if it works. If it doesn’t work, then you could have a motherboard problem. If it works, then you probably need a new keyboard. When I tried to replace my keyboard, I broke one leg off the white plastic keyboard ribbon retaining clip.
As for someone else’s problem, Toshiba recently repaired my A75 laptop which was overheating, freezing up and also shutting down. They had to replace the motherboard, fan and repair the AC connector. Now it works fine and cools well. Repairs were made under Toshiba’s extended warranty.
October 21st, 2007 at 9:44 pm
I’m having problems with my keyboard.
Sometimes, certain keys will not function. It’s always the same keys.
i.e. it’s the( ‘C’, ‘M’, ‘ ‘ ‘).
Eventually they will work again but it is very annoying.
Can this be fixed?
October 18th, 2007 at 10:27 pm
Kayode,
You can get free repair from Toshiba, this model is covered under extended warranty. Hurry, it ends soon.
October 18th, 2007 at 6:19 pm
Toshiba M35x-311
Im having a problem no one else seems to be having. My compuiter worked fine untill I shut it off. When I tried to turn it back on in normal mode it freezes within the first minute. It boots up ok in safe mode. I formatted the HD and had the same problem. Used the recovery CD and the problem still hasnt gone away. How do I troubble shoot all the hardware on this thing? Could I find out whats causing the problem in the event log? Are there any known hardware failures? Ive been without a comp for 2 weeks in college so its crippling me. Please help! E-mail me or post with any solutions, thanks! koige@stthomas.edu
October 1st, 2007 at 6:24 pm
Thanks for the well-prepared 20 step instruction set to corect a broken connection on the DC input jack – the problem plaguing many Toshiba MX series owners. Neither of us had ever taken apart a laptop, however in 3 hours, we had repaired (re-soldered) the cracked pin connection to the system board and verified that it worked like new. This unit was a Toshiba Satellite M35X S311. We could now probably repeat the fix in half the time. I recommend this procedure to anyone who has basic tools, good vision and patience. The documented steps with well-marked images was the key to our success.
September 25th, 2007 at 1:12 am
HDD connector resolved.
)
For anyone else puzzled by the Satellite M35X-S3112 laptop’s HDD connector here’s what I found:
While the HDD doesn’t appear to be in a “caddy” the HDD has a small brownish plastic cover over its 44-pins that allow it to mate wth the HDD connector on the motherboard.
You can see examples of this small piece by searching for “Toshiba HDD caddy connector” or “Toshiba HDD laptop caddy connector” (no quotes). Several are listed on eBay.
This connector can be carefully removed by using a small flathead jeweller’s screwdriver (or similar) and prying under it’s shoulder away from the HDD alternating each side until you can lift the connector off the normal IDE pins.
Once the plastic connector is off, the HDD which is a Hitachi Travelstar (in this case its an 80 GB model tha goes under the name of Travelstar 80GN as found on hitachigst.com). The HDD pinouts are provided on Hitachi’s site, but for this drive they are:
43 — 19 — 1 C A
44 — 22 — 2 D B
That is 2 rows of 22 pins with row 2-44 missing a pin at point 22. 4 additional pins A-D are at the right and are for the “drive address setting” (my assumption is that this may be like the typical master, slave, cable select setting).
Anyway, the exposed IDE pins allow the HDD to be mounted in an external case and connected to another laptop or computer via USB cable. Generally these sell for under $20.
Hopefully this info will help someone else trying to access their data but afraid to start prying this plastic part off the HDD. Of course the bottom line is carefully and without too much force…
HDD data access resolved (ahhh…)
Now just to figure out if the laptop can be revived.
September 23rd, 2007 at 5:13 pm
Well, re-soldered the bottom of the DC jack and added a second new jack (Radio Shack part) near the old one. Checked the voltages on both before and after soldering to the board.
Starting up the board seems to fail.
Could use some help on this. Its my main work laptop and, as typical, I’m in the middle of the project and of course there is some work I’d like to retrieve (about 1 wk worth after a backup). Yes, lesson learned on backing up — actually am in the process of building a file server to get that in order, but here’s what I’m trying to do now…
(1) Gain access to the data from the M35x-S3112 laptop I tried to fix.
(2) Determine why the ‘fixed’ laptop doesn’t go beyond fan power up.
For the HDD, I’ve still got it out of the case and am struggling to figure out how I can connect it as an external HDD to my other laptop — The connector appears to be a proprietary insertion type versus a regular(?) 40pin laptop IDE. I have a wiebetech combo dock and other external enclosures as well as a 40 to 44 pin adapter, but of course those won’t connect directly to this HDD. So any help/ideas here would be very much appreciated. This is the more important of the 2 issues to fix for me at this point.
On the laptop powerup problem…
It seems to power up the fan, then turn off in a matter of seconds. All front lights appear as they should (on AC, laptop on, battery charging) and the blue LED(?) around the power is colored. I guess I would expect the system to keep going to at least beeps, but it may be that I’m missing the clue-bird on this one…
I’ve got everything installed except the HDD. So, should the laptop progress any further than the power up to get the fan and LEDs going, battery charging then because it finds no HDD power down? Or is this near immediate power down a sign of a failure somewhere? Or short?
I’ve done the soldering all on the bottom of the board — the original DC jack was loose around the inside pin, so in addition to adding the wires to connect to the second new jack, I soldered the bottom of the old jack. Multimeter tests on the top of the board (via the jack) indicate that the voltage is as expected (19+v) for plugging into either jack. So, it seems that the jack is okay. The board is from a M35x-s3112 whose motherboard is very dense — not much space for new solders though I was careful to avoid other connections.
I also disassembled a second time and added more thermal grease in case this is a heat issue for both the video and CPU, though I guess I’d be surprised if things heated up in only 2-3 seconds to the point of power down.
Anyway is the current power off typical? Perhaps there is a way for me to boot via CD to test before putting in the precious HDD with my critical data?
Ideas welcome! Thanks!
September 21st, 2007 at 3:28 pm
I have no idea why it worked, but when I installed the video driver for intel, the suspend option was again available. Thanks very much for your help.
September 21st, 2007 at 2:55 pm
I uninstalled the power untility and then installed the console. Then I installed the power utility again.
However, after rebooting, the standby still does not work. It is not listed as an option on shut down and closing the lid does nothing. Thank you for responding.
September 21st, 2007 at 2:40 pm
Did you install “Toshiba Console for Windows XP/2000″ first?
September 21st, 2007 at 1:44 pm
Hi, I recently installed a regular edition of Windows XP Pro, but it did not have the Toshiba drivers. I went to the Toshiba web site and got almost everything I need downloaded and installed.
I have one problem left. When I press the shut off button the option to put it into standby is shaded out and will not work. I did install Toshiba’s power setting program.
Does anyone know what I can do to restore the standby function?
As always, thanks for all your help. Mary
September 18th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
Thanks for the great guides and pics!
Am in the midst of the repair for the DC jack (alternative version using the RadioShack 274-1582) M35X-S3112.
A couple tips to share…
For those having trouble removing the securing strip — mine was very tight though I was able to use a jeweller’s screwdriver to pop the corner. At the top edge of the keyboard (underneath the securing strip, closest to the LCD) you can see where there are about 4 screws securing the keyboard to the base that run underneath the securing strip. I used another slightly beefier flathead screwdriver tip and twisted it away from the corner that I’d popped. This popped another section loose from the base. After trying at the other screw ports, I tried loosening the hinges a bit more as they don’t really lift out straight since the LCD doesn’t lay back enough. So I flipped the laptop over and used the same small jeweller’s flathead and popped the second hinge and loosened the first one more. This allowed the strip to be pried a bit more, eventually releasing first from the edge nearest the LCD, then nearest the keyboard. At that point I was pretty much pulling the strip up from the LCD side first. This made it much easier to remove without putting too much force on it.
The small jeweller’s flathead screwdriver also made it easier to pry up underneath the fan and speaker connectors which have a small lip. Prying on one side then the other back and forth jockeys the connectors enough to loosen them for removal.
I’d expected to see lots of dust in the area of the fan and heatsink since this laptop got very hot when running (hot enough to need to shift it from spot to spot every few minutes when using it in my lap), but the fan and heatsink were relatively clean.
On the oher hand, the speakers were filthy. It seems that this particular laptop design didn’t take into account that placement of the speaker nearer the user increases the amount of lint, dust, crumbs, etc. that can fall into the speaker grille. So I’ve cleaned these areas.
For the audio board cable, I noted that though the connector had a brown section, it does not apparently loosen like the keyboard connector. Instead this cable is just pulled out by pulling it up and toward you (rear of the laptop facing away from you).
Everything went fine for me step by step until the final step to remove the motherboard. It seems to be frozen in place, perhaps stuck by some of the same stuff used for keeping the screws in place? The hex nuts for the serial & parallel port have been removed, and I’ve checked to make sure I didn’t miss a screw removal, but its not budging. Don’t want to force things so thought I’d give a shout here before doing soldering only on the top of the motherboard for the fix. It seems that the board is tight/stuck near the serial & parallel ports on the back as well as near the DC jack and CPU. Ideas on removing the board without breaking it are sure welcome!
Thanks in advance for any help on unsticking the motherboard!
September 16th, 2007 at 6:31 am
Hooray!!! I managaed to find some new plastic ribbon cable connectors in China and they just arrived. Now I can put my Toshiba M35X laptop back together again.
September 16th, 2007 at 1:24 am
Victor I just want to say that i have made everthing, reseating the cable on both sides, but nothing, change drivers, and still the same problem.
Dont know what can it be.
Still looking over the internet to solve my problem, if i find it i will post it.
good luck to all!
September 13th, 2007 at 9:44 pm
Hello,
I have been working on my friend’s A70 and it has the same widescreen display problem exhibited in the post by Rodrigo on June 23, 2007. I already attempted to reseat the monitor cable (located under the plastic panel in front of the keyboard) but it had no effect. Did anybody ever figure out a solution to this? I noticed that in the video driver’s monitor panel, the display for some unknown reason was reporting a max resolution of 1024×768 when the native resolution is of course 1280×800. Forcing the screen resolution to 1280×800 simply made the system pan around in 1024×768, so I am thinking it’s a hardware or driver problem.
Thanks for any ideas,
-Vic.
September 12th, 2007 at 8:37 am
Here’s a really beginner question. I have a M35X-S311 that I bought in 2005, my warranty was up in 2006. I have been reading about all the problems with the battery charger and the connection on the motherboard thingy. About 6 months ago, my battery gave up. It wouldn’t charge anymore. I am wondering before this new warranty period ends, if I should send it in, in case something is wrong? How long does a battery last? Is a year and a half a long time? When I put in my linux hard drive it shows it is charging to 3%, and the charging light doesn’t come on. but now it doesn’t even charge in Linux.
September 11th, 2007 at 8:28 am
My original warranty ran out on my m35x on feb 6, 2006.
Does anyone know if the extra 12 month warranty that started in november of 2006 still applies to me?
September 5th, 2007 at 11:48 am
I called the Toshiba 1-800 number and they gave me a local authorized repair shop. I took it to them and they are going to fix it for free. Our laptops are still under warranty until november 6, 2007. Even if you did not pay for it.
September 5th, 2007 at 10:43 am
Checked the battery using a multimeter and it appears to be ok. Seems the motherboard is able ot charge it. I cannot however run the laptop of the battery. AC is ok. Does anyone know if there is a way to check that motherboard is faulty since it cannot switch to battery only.
Thanks.
September 3rd, 2007 at 8:58 pm
Well, I just took about an hour to read this whole page. There is some good info out there. Thanks for helping. But I am having the same problem as everybody else. The blue power button turns on but it does not boot up my computer. I guess we have not found an answer yet. I just contacted the Lawyer for the Toshiba settlement and hopefully they will fix it. I will continue my search and will post if I fix it, until then any help is appreciated.
September 3rd, 2007 at 8:42 am
Hi,
Has anyone tested the battery using a multimeter. What are the voltage pins?
Thanks
September 2nd, 2007 at 4:23 pm
cj2600 Thank you for the information. I really appreciate it. Mary
September 2nd, 2007 at 6:41 am
Hi,
Is there a way to check if the battery is good using a multimeter and checking the battery pins? If the battery is OK, is it possible I may have forgotten connecting something back when I disassembled the laptop, or is the battery connected directly to the motherboard?
Thanks for your help.
September 1st, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Mary Murdock,
Sure, I’ll help you.
Here’s what you are looking for.
Panasonic – K000015860
Teac – K000015870
Panasonic – K000024880
KME (double layer) – K000029610
All above mentioned drives will be able read/write CDs and DVDs.
September 1st, 2007 at 7:48 pm
John,
That’s a weird problem, I’ve never seen something like this. Test your laptop with an external USB keyboard and see if it works fine. Maybe something is wrong with the laptop keyboard? Make sure the heat sink is clean. There is a chance that this problem is somehow is related to overheating. This is just a guess.
September 1st, 2007 at 7:43 pm
TZ,
This is either a battery problem or there is something wrong with the motherboard. Sorry, the only way to find out what is wrong is testing the laptop with a known good battery.
September 1st, 2007 at 11:19 am
Hey. I have a M35X-S311. I would like to replace the dvd/cdrw drive with a dvd drive that records both cd and dvd. Does anyone know the number for a replacement, or if it can be replaced? As usual, Toshiba was no help. Thanks.
August 31st, 2007 at 2:04 pm
Hello,
One day my I was using my laptop and my after 10 min of use my keyboard started to act strange. It started randomly displaying different characters if I am typing something. I formatted the computer thinking that it was a virus or something but it didn’t work. Every time i use it, it works good for 10 min and then starts to act funny. If anyone can help me I would really apreciate it.
Thanks,
John
August 30th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
Hi,
I have a M35x-S349. I have fixed the DC jack problem but when I disconnect the AC power and try to use battery only computer will not start. When connecting the AC power the battery seems to be charging normally and the OS reports the battery as fully charged.
Anyone experienced this problem?. Any solutions?
Thanks.
August 26th, 2007 at 8:40 pm
Adil,
I believe on a Satellite M35 (not M35X) the cooling fan will not start when you turn on the laptop. It starts later, when the CPU is hot. So, it’s normal.
Check the memory module, make sure it’s a good memory. Try turning on the laptop without the hard drive and see if it still freezes.
Test the laptop without the CD/DVD drive. Does it work properly without the CD/DVD drive installed?