Fixed my A105 for 24hrs, then it died again.. related or unrelated?

Ok. I recently bought a *used* Toshiba Satellite A105-S4134 laptop on craiglist. I bought it for an extreme discount because the DC jack was bad. The main symptom was this: you would have to wiggle the AC adapter plug around like crazy in the DC socket on the laptop until the LED on the computer lights up. Then, as long as you didn't move the computer, it would work great: the battery charged just fine.. and the laptop worked fine from both power from the battery or power from the AC adapter. The guy I bought it from apparently ruined his original AC adapter, so the one supplied with the computer is a replacement adapter (non-OEM... maybe cheap Chinese?).

Fast forward to two nights ago: I ordered a new DC jack, opened up the laptop and removed the old and badly damaged DC jack and replacing it with the new one. I put the laptop back together, plugged it in... and VOILA it worked perfectly! I could plug and unplug the AC adapter into the computer as many times as I wanted... the computer worked perfectly as intended. Woohoo! Problem solved. Then, this morning, I turned on the laptop, started using it, and noticed the screen suddenly got a bit dimmer (usually implying it autodimmed due to the AC adapter being removed and the battery now being used). Sure enough, the battery icon was on in the windows tray. I checked the connection of the cable but everything is solid as can be. Wiggling the cable doesn't do anything. I've checked the AC adapter with a voltmeter and I see a bit over 15V... which is just right. I havne't measured the current, but expect that to be OK too.. just need to check it. I have removed the battery to see if that was causing the problem... nope.. still doesn't work with the battery removed and the AC adapter plugged in.

At any rate, the questions I have are: what can I do to figure out what's going on here? Any ideas on what it could be?

Thanks in advance!

 

i think your mainboard has burned out.

 

Ok. So if my mainboard is actually the culprit here and has 'burned out', how do I go about verifying this? Is there any easy test I can do to show me that this is the case? Sounds like I'd want to be sure that its actually the main board as this is the most expensive component.

thanks

 

Also, why would it be the mainboard if I was still able to use the computer perfectly under battery power? I'm now un able to use it at all... I've since drained the battery and have no means to charge it.

Is it possible there would be something going on with the mainboard where you can't use the AC power but *can* use the battery power? Other than the DC jack?

thanks

 

Did you soldier the jack in or use some other means? Also, was the new jack one that came out of another laptop or a new one from say radioshack?

 

Thanks for the reply. I soldered the jack in. I bought the replacement DC jack from a dealer that sells new, OEM parts. If I have the time, this wknd I'm going to open up the laptop again and see if the soldering gave a little, breaking the connection. That's the only thing I can think of at this point.

Any more ideas?

 

Opening it and checking the connections seems the right place to start. Sometimes unsoldering and resoldering placement peices gets the connection really dirty. The best thing to do is remove enough solder to make sure you are actually soldering the pins to where they need to go directly, rather than soldering it onto old solder. While you have it open check all of the voltage and such.

 

Ok.. thanks for the suggestions. I'll be sure to really clean it up nice and good here the second time around. In this case, I'm not soldering directly to a board.. I'm soldering to two wire leads as this particular setup has the DC jack that is not fit solidly on the mainboard. Who knows, maybe one of the wire leads broke free.. but to be honest I thought I did a decent job. I'll soon find out and report back. In the meantime, please.. if anyone has any other suggestions please ... I'd appreciate hearing them!

Thanks all-