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.
October 28th, 2008 at 11:49 am
Many thanks!
Followed the directions to fix the DC jack on a M35X-S149 (cold/broken solder joint).
So far so good!
October 21st, 2008 at 6:33 am
Need Help !! May be with finding drivers !!
Three weeks ago i found my Toshiba M35X S111 (windows XP) has infected with Virus. So i had to Formatted it from the Recovery CD.Most things i use looks fine after installation But i do not see any “Wireless Connection” Icon under Network connections. I only see the LAN connection and its working fine for me. I like to setup my wireless network the way it was before.Then after i started looking for Wireless LAN driver see if it solves my prob. But its been 3 weeks now, i could not find the right Driver.
Any Help Appreciated troubleshooting my problem.
October 20th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Just repaired an M35 with a heating problem. The M35 was shutting down from time to time, as described above. The problem was that the thermal grease was partially burned! When removing the heat sink with help from this disassembly guide, there was a big visible black spot on top of the CPU, instead of the thermal grease. After applying new thermal grease, it seems to be working fine.
Good luck
October 20th, 2008 at 8:30 am
I forgot to mention, I have already dealt with the power jack issue and got that fixed, so I’m about 95% sure that is not the issue here.
October 20th, 2008 at 8:24 am
Hello folks,
I have a Toshiba Satellite M35X that was giving me SMART FAILURE messages concerning the hard drive (Hitachi Travelstar 60GB). It lasted for some time giving me the SMART FAILURE. Couldn’t do much on the machine because it wouldn’t write or save any information, but it is a secondary machine that I only needed for using the internet. Eventually, the machine just went out on me and wouldn’t start up at all. When I tried to turn it on, sometimes the power button would light up for a moment then just go dead again, sometimes it would get all the way to the Toshiba startup screen, then it would crash again.
I ended up replacing the hard drive with a 160GB Hitachi (HTS541616J9AT00). After replacing the new hard drive, I still get the exact same symptoms (i.e. the machine will not start up).
Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks!
October 19th, 2008 at 10:17 am
I have a grinding fan in my Tosh M35 and have purchased the fan but had a bit of a problem getting my top cover off. I followed irisvista instructions begining at step 8 because i only needed to replace the fan which is on top and didn’t need to do anything on the bottom like mess with memory, the hard drive, or the cd drive. I bought a guitar pick and cut my fingers up trying to get the cover to release but to no avail.
Are any of the screws on the bottom securing the cover? Is there anything else I might be missing?
Thanks!!
October 15th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
I just wanted to let you all know that I am selling my m35 Toshiba laptop. It has a new motherboard because the old one had the power on for 3 seconds then shuts off disease. If interested email me to christopheralvarado@hotmail.com for more info.
October 15th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Joey, try the following method. Right-click on the My Computer icon and go to Properties > Harware > Device Manager. In the device manager, look for any devices that have an exclamation mark (A black exclamation point (!) on a yellow field indicates the device is in a problem state.) You may be able to right click on the item with the problem and select Update Driver > Update Automatically (which searches automatically on the internet).
September 30th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Hi there guys well for some reason my little brother formatted my hard drive and erased everything, now I have no audio nor video, I managed to get the video working but I still have yet to find an Audio driver for my sound might any of you guys have the link to it my laptop is a M35X-S111 again thank you guys..
September 29th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
There are two threaded fasteners that attach the video connector to the case. Be sure to undo the speaker connector and speaker ribbon cable.
Jerry
September 28th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
My wife’s computer started just shutting down and going to a flashing green light. I suspect it to be the power jack issue everyone is talking about here. I’ve got the laptop stripped to the bottom case but cannot get the system board out. There doesn’t seem to be anything holding it in but it won’t lift out, I can get it part way up but it seems like it’s still held to the base somewhere near under the CPU socket. Can’t find any other screws to remove. Please help! Thanks for such a great website.
P.K.Q.
September 26th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Hi. I have a similar problem with the many who have mentioned the lights on but nobody home scenario. However My laptop always boots up. Sometimes I have to wait a few minutes and sometimes closer to an hour, then the BIOS kicks in and everything runs fine. I’m glad it works but the unknown waiting period on every boot up is killing me. My friend suggested it might be a CMOS battery but I have found absolutely no information online that so much as tells me how to locate and replace my CMOS battery.
I also did soldering on the power jack myself, so it’s possible the 48 pin chip has problems, it’s just that I’m not moving anything and after quite a while the BIOS kicks in, as I said. And tips would be HUGELY appreciated, even some links to help me find appropriate discussions would be fantastic. Thank you very much.
-Cody
September 19th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
WHEN I PUSH THE POWER BUTTOM ON MY 35X THE POWER BUTTOM LIGHTS UP AND THE FAN RUNS FOR 2-3 SECONDS THEN NOTHING, CDROM DOESN’T WORK EITHER, ANY SUGGESTIONS?
September 8th, 2008 at 9:11 am
does a toshiba satellite s1900-303 have an expansion bay or any bay at all to connect a serial port to.
September 8th, 2008 at 1:40 am
Hi CJ,
Many thanks, with your guide i’m able to dismantle and repair my friend’s M35X, but because it is hard to remove the socket ( lack of equipment ) and it hard to find one, i jumpering the centre pin to the fuse in with small cable, and it solved the problem. the cable is along the processor cooling fan.
August 22nd, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Hi,
fantastic site. Got the same problems with M30X as most of You and I got it fixed by Your instructions.
Thanks a lot
Hanno ( from Germany )
August 9th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
i have a toshiba m35x-s161 and i have the dc jack problem but i think i can handle that but when i press the power button nothing happens but a blue light comes, the fan runs for a second and that is it does any one know how to remedy this problem
August 4th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
So I had Windows XP installed on my Toshiba laptop (M35X-S163) and when I got it back, the sound isn’t working, I apparently need to install a new driver for that. And the wireless key was deleted. I’m sure many other things as well, but I’ve yet to figure it out.
If you have any idea on where I could go to get this fixed, please email me, it would help out a lot. I’m about to start school and I need the sound for a class I’m taking. Can’t afford to to buy a new one and don’t have a lot of money to get it fixed.
July 28th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
i had th eno boot thing and i just super glued the dc thing to the board and she works good oh im so happy every one kept telling me i needed a new motherboard
July 26th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
my laptop has the outer two lights lit under the latch the center light is out. the laptop won’t come on at all. the blue power button does not light up no noise no nothing. computer worked fine yesterday. of the three lights on the front the left is green the right is orange/red. If i move the power connecter i can sometimes get the center light to come on green for a split second.
July 16th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
My Toshiba Satellite computer is not playing any volume. The buttons on the keyboard will “beep” but I can hear nothing either from the speakers or the headphones outlet. I have tried the control panel and volume control but can’t seem to figure out why the volume has suddenly disappeared. Can you help?
July 11th, 2008 at 1:41 am
Laptop CPU overheating is common to most brand laptop. Funny my Asus laptop also face the CPU overheating. Sending to their service centre… find out it just a dust already full covered the heatsink. That it…clean it and everything run ok. Maybe the case same with other brand to.
cheers
July 3rd, 2008 at 7:53 am
Bernie,
You can try testing the motherboard as it shown in the last picture in this troubleshooting guide: Laptop is dead. How to troubleshoot the problem.
July 3rd, 2008 at 6:29 am
Hello everyone who’s had toshiba laptops
I have a m30x (or m35x, don’t know since I can’t boot it anymore) and I have the same 5 sec fan then nothing symptom.
I have entirely dismounted it (heatsink/PSU(?)) but I can’t seem to detach the mobo from the case (the serial/vga pins seem stuck)
Since I have it entirely dismounted, is there anything I can do to test parts ? Visual inspection ?
My DC jack looks fine and doesn’t budge, but I can’t say for sure.
I was told I could ‘flash’ the BIOS by removing the motherboard battery, but can’t seem to find it on my laptop !
I’ll add pics if anyone replies.
Thank you and have a good day !
July 2nd, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Thanks for the instructions. Just performed a laptopectomy to try to fix a no boot situation. The power plug had been fixed under warantee so I wasn’t expecting that to be it.
The symptoms were power on, HD one flash, fan whirs 5 secs, and then nothing, couldn’t even shut it down manually until I pulled the power.
I pulled the HD and slaved it to another laptop, seemed ok, but my Norton AV went into overdrive, and I cleaned off 32 viruses of assorted maliciousness. The Toshiba was running Fix-it Antivirus which I usually invoke manually, but hadn’t done so in about a month.
Anyway, I dissected the thing down to the motherboard, blew out the dust bunnies and tumbleweeds and put it back together. I gave the speakers a good cleaning since I read they were prone to a static discharge event that might cause this situation.
I did have a screw that wouldn’t reseat because the inmold nut had broken off due to apparently some trauma. There was also a minor crack in the outer case at the corner where the optical drive inserts, but nothing really structural.
To my great pleasure, it rebooted normally when I put it all back together. I went prancing around the house chanting “He da man, he da man”. My kids were very happy to get their laptop back, I just wish that whereever they were surfing (Myspace, Facebook, ???) was less virus ridden. I must clean at least a dozen viruses a week off their computer if I find the time.
Don’t know what was really wrong with it, but the “take it apart and put it together” approach seemed to work at least this time. Couldn’t have done it without the instructions. Thanks again.
July 2nd, 2008 at 6:31 pm
i have a problem, i played a game called halo trial on my m35x s161, it worked fine after i downloaded many things it kinda got slow, so my dad bought a windows xp cd which made the computer add another section first it was win xp home edition. now i have windows xp pro. so i can choose which one i would like when i turn on my computer. i had gotten this becuase my computer was gotten very slow. then when i downloaded halo, it had a problem, it said i need directdraw and i should press start-> run-> type in dxdiag. so on my old operating system i have directdraw and driect3d and apg texture acceration, now i do not have any of those and i do not know where to find it, it also says “The system is using the generic video driver. Please install video driver provided by the hardware manufacturer.” and
“Direct3D functionality not available. You should verify that the driver is a final version from the hardware manufacturer.” i tried the website but it only has wifi drivers and sound and no video drivers or anything please help me the fate of my entertainment is on hand!
June 26th, 2008 at 8:46 am
Just fixed an M35X-S163 that had the no boot issue (blue power light, 5 sec run on fan), reflowed the 48 pin chip next to the power connector as suggested by EddieT in post 195, very fine pitch leads fortunately I have a microscope and a real soldering iron with surfacemount tips, the same work could be performed with a homemade hot air pencil (google is your friend). HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY.
May 30th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
If we could get laptops in the UK for such low prices I’d readily agree with you. It’s more like $700-$800 (£350-£400) over here for an equivalent basic machine! Hence to me $250 to fix a laptop sounds cheap. I’ve had 2 of these laptops running for over 2 years with the power connectors epox’d on with no problems. I gave up on another Toshiba because I couldn’t get a low cost replacement board in the UK that worked - some you win! Who’s to say any other machine is better as they all use similar soldered on connectors. I think the Apple Macs with their magnetic power connectors are a massive step in the right direction but the prices are way too high for me. I’m no laptop expert - I’m just going on my own experiences of what I’ve seen.
May 30th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Just add $240 to $259 and buy a brand new Acer or Toshiba from NewEgg.
I wouldn’t pay $259 for a new, I mean refurbished, motherboard for a Satellite M35X. It’s going to fail sooner or later anyway.
May 30th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
It looks like if you live in the US (I don’t) the K000019660 is available for $259:
http://www.impactcomputers.com/toshiba-satellite-m35x-s149-parts-internal-parts-and-assemblies.html
Looks like a good price for a new guaranteed board.
Stuart