Laptop needs power cable wiggling about for it to charge - dry solder?

Soldato
Joined
31 Dec 2003
Posts
4,749
Location
Stoke on Trent
hi all,

I think my laptop's developed a dry solder joint, else something's happened to it which means to get it to charge I have to wiggle the power cable in the back of it.

It's a pretty decent laptop that would be a massive shame to write off, is there anywhere you can recommend to get this sort of thing fixed please?

It's 8 days after the end of the warranty :mad: :(
 
Mine did this too, I solved it by routing the cable under the laptop behind one of the legs before it went off to the plug in the wall so it held the plug to the side a little, if you can find which way the plug needs to go hopefully you could do this too.
 
this hasnt worked, does anyone know any company that repairs a dry solder / loose power cable connection in the back of a laptop please?

Rang round 3 places in Stoke yesterday, 2 didn't fix it and 1 wanted £130.
 
Surely you can speak to the Manufacturer? 8 days is too short and i would think the fault developed months ago but you only just started seeing it.
 
I've just rang around a few laptop repair companies and I've had quotes ranging from £70 to £155, I don't know if its worth a go myself you know as a) Havn't got a soldering iron so would have to buy or borrow one. b) I dont think i'd be able to fix it anyway, i might even mess it up even more, and its a decent laptop.

masterk - Its outside the warranty so there isn't even a contact number (that I Can find with any ease at all on Toshiba/TheTechGuy's site). Also after just speaking to a laptop repair company they said that I should count myself lucky I didn't send it back to the manufacturer as they wouldn't have covered it under the warranty and they would have charged me for looking at it!!!
 
stokefan said:
I've just rang around a few laptop repair companies and I've had quotes ranging from £70 to £155, I don't know if its worth a go myself you know as a) Havn't got a soldering iron so would have to buy or borrow one. b) I dont think i'd be able to fix it anyway, i might even mess it up even more, and its a decent laptop.
Yes it probably is not worth trying yourself if you haven't had the thing apart before. I've done it in the past with an old laptop but by the time I needed to fix it I'd taken it apart numerous times so I knew where all the screws/random wires/etc. went. The actual soldering is probably the easy bit compared to actually opening your laptop :)

£70 seems relatively cheap compared to the quotes my housemate got when the same happened to hers. She ended up going with some dodgy guy who charged £50: his "repairs" basically consisted of duct tape and obviously didn't last very long :D
 
yea I thought £70 didnt seem too bad really, the company is called The Laptop Repair Company so this is obviously their bread and butter, he said on the phone this is the most common type of repair he has to do.
 
I'd go with that then as at least you'll get it over and done with quickly. Seems amazing to me that laptop designers haven't universally overcome this problem yet.
 
You're likely to be victim of your manufacturers cost-cutting. There is a type of connection for power on laptops that is commonly used when the manufacturer want to make cut costs. Basically when you plug it in each time, the bit in the middle of your port is damaged if you aren't careful. Overtime is breaks and ceases to charge unless you somehow wiggle it into contact.

This happened when i was back at my old school when the teachers bought a load of laptops and discovered they have batteries that don't charge and half o the connectors broke.
 
BlackDragon said:
You're likely to be victim of your manufacturers cost-cutting. There is a type of connection for power on laptops that is commonly used when the manufacturer want to make cut costs. Basically when you plug it in each time, the bit in the middle of your port is damaged if you aren't careful. Overtime is breaks and ceases to charge unless you somehow wiggle it into contact.

This happened when i was back at my old school when the teachers bought a load of laptops and discovered they have batteries that don't charge and half o the connectors broke.

Generally I've seen this problem more on the connection units solder to the mobo more than the pin braking in the socket.
 
Had this problem on my Compaq, typical everything had to come out of the laptop to get to the problem, 1:30 hours taking it apart, 30 seconds to solder the joint back and another 30min to put back, having a proper torx screw driver would have made it a lot easier. :o

Its quite easy to fix even if your not to good at soldering as the joints are quite big.

You can probably find the service manual on line somewhere. have a look here

http://repair4laptop.org/disassembly_toshiba.html
http://www.laptoprepair101.com/laptop/category/laptop-service-manual/
 
J.B said:
Generally I've seen this problem more on the connection units solder to the mobo more than the pin braking in the socket.
Yeah this is my experience too, as stress is put on the connection to the motherboard as the power jack wiggles around in the socket. On my old old laptop the power socket had become completely detached from the motherboard in this way.
 
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