This guide will help you to get inside a Toshiba Satellite P20 or P25 laptop. Let me tell you guys up front that taking this beast apart is not for beginners. Lots of screws, lots of connectors.
Some basic stuff like removing the hard drive, DVD drive, both memory modules, wireless card, modem or even the cooling fans with heatsink is not difficult, because all these part can be easily accessed from the bottom of the laptop. But removing and replacing the motherboard is kinda tricky.
If the laptop overheats - clean the heatsink. Just remove the cover and blow off the cooling module with compressed air. It’s not necessary to remove the heatsink in order to clean it up. In most cases cleaning it with compressed air will help you to fix or prevent the overheating issue.
You’ll have to remove the heatsink only if you are taking the whole thing apart, replacing the processor or applying new thermal grease on the processor. Be careful. When you pull the heatsink, most likely you’ll pull the processor too. It will come out attached to the heatsink. Carefully separate the processor and install it back into the socket. Make sure you unlock the socket before inserting the processor and lock it after it is installed. It will help you to keep the processor safe.
Here’s another guide. You can use this guide for taking apart the display panel. In this guide you’ll find illustrated instructions for removing or replacing LCD screen or inverter board.
October 31st, 2008 at 5:08 pm
please tell me i don’t have to totally disasemble my toshiba p25 to replace power dock, any shortcuts?
September 2nd, 2008 at 7:03 am
need help with USB on my P20. It is running fine, until I plug something in the usb port then the laptop stall and i can do nothing on it no usb aplication want to work, when I unpluged the usb the laptop turn back to normal. any advice? thanks Chris
August 17th, 2008 at 6:37 am
I have a p25-s609. When you boot it gives a error for the “A” drive. It doeesn’t have an “A” drive. I can’t find a place to internally install a floppy. I disabled in bios to go to hard drive or cd first and not to look for network or floppy. If i can get past that it tells me BOOTMGR missing clt+alt+del to restart. Will not boot to XP cd, USB, Hard drive, ultimate boot cd. Can’t figure out what the problem is. Replaced the hard drive with a 100gig. Have tested that drive in a external kit and works fine. Is it possible the hard drive connector is bad and trying to find a floopy? It does see the HDD. All tests pass in bios until it looks for the floppy. Thanks for any help you can give.
July 21st, 2008 at 9:21 am
After doing some more investigating I found that all the symptoms I have point to a ball grid array chip failure which is fairly common for his board. Unfortunately it cost about as much to replace the board as to repair it when it has this problem. I found I was able to boot normally after setting it on VGA mode in the boot menu but that leaves everything in very large size and it cannot be readjusted after booting that way.
July 21st, 2008 at 9:13 am
to: Mark Graffis , i would try a new windows at first. Since it is booting in Save mode as usual without any wild signs i doubt its the Video chip.
To Simon… I think i would confirm at first the dc jack connector. Is he corect placed? If just the screen stays black, check the cable what conects the LCD, at the backsite of the screen. I got this sometimes as well, that this cable got loose, and had to fix it again, Its just pluged and keeps holding with a simple pice of film. not that well made….
Hans
July 20th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
I replaced the dc jack connector, put it back together and the screen is black. I tried to use an external monitor to see if i didnt connect the lcd back but its not that. Its not booting up at all. I thought I didn’t screw the processor down correctly but it was not that. What else could it be?
July 16th, 2008 at 11:32 am
I have a P25 Satellite that all of a sudden started booting up with zeros all over the screen and some letters garbled. It will boot with normal looking video in safe mode but only goes so far as the Windows logo when booting normally as far as video goes although you can hear it finish booting. I get the same thing if I attach an external monitor and read elsewhere that if this is the case the video chip has come partially loose and more than likely the whole motherboard needs to be replaced. Supposedly this is a common issue with this computer and I would like to have it confirmed and also know if there are any alternatives other than replacing the motherboard. Thanks for any help!
July 14th, 2008 at 10:41 am
Turns out the problem really was the power adapter. Received the new one today, it works perfectly i’m so happy! Thanks
July 13th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Anytime
July 11th, 2008 at 11:50 am
There you go! I’m getting 19V and barely 3.2A so that’s why i’m having all these problems. I’ve just ordered a new power adapter but this time it’s a Toshiba, not some third party OEM stuff. I should receive it on monday so i’ll post the results here.
Zonga thanks a lot for your help!
July 11th, 2008 at 11:28 am
it should give you
19V 6.3A
Good luck!
July 11th, 2008 at 5:03 am
I bought a multimeter to check it out and i think that it doesn’t give enough amps for the laptop. It could explain the problems i am having. Just to make sure could you give me what voltage and amper you’re getting on yours?
Thanks,
Simon
July 7th, 2008 at 4:54 am
When i´m home i gonna check the voltage and the Amper you should get out of it.. I´m at work and my Notebook is at home..