System board also know as motherboard
A system board also known as motherboard or mainboard is the main circtuit board in any laptop. Unlike desktop PC system boards, laptop system boards come in thousands of different shapes and sizes. Laptop motherboards are model-specific. In other words, you cannot remove motherboard from a Toshiba laptop and stick it into a Dell laptop. All parts inside a laptop are connected to the system board, either directly via a connector mounted on the system board or through a cable.
In a typical laptop the following ports and components are permanently attached to the system board and cannot be easily removed and replaced without soldering:
1. Hard drive (HDD) connector.
2. CD/DVD drive connector.
3. Memory (RAM) slots.
4. Battery connector.
5. Keyboard connector.
6. Audio (headphone and microphone) jacks.
7. Volume control wheel.
8. USB ports.
9. Eithernet (RJ45 aka network) port.
10. IEEE 1394 (Fire Wire) ports.
11. Video chip and some other components and ports.
System board, processor (CPU) and LCD screen are the most expensive parts in any laptop. In some cases, when one of these three parts fails, it’s cheaper to buy a brand new laptop than replace the failed part. But each case is different so do your research.
The system board is mounted inside the laptop base assembly. In order to remove or replace the motherboard, you’ll have to disassemble the whole laptop.
SYSTEM BOARD FAILURE SYMPTOMS.
When a system board fails, you may experience the following most common problems with your laptop. 1. The laptop is completely dead. There are no LED light activity when you press on the power button or plug in a known good AC power adapter. 2. The laptop starts but the video output on the LCD screen or external monitor is garbled. Most likely this is related to the VGA chip failure. 3. The laptop turns on without video on the screen and the power LED starts flashing. 4. The laptop works fine with AC power adapter but will not charge a known good battery. If that’s the case, most likely there is something wrong with the battery charging circuit or DC power jack.
Need spare parts for your laptop?
If you are looking for spare parts for your laptop you can find brand new and used parts here. Just search by the part name and laptop model.
March 23rd, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Thanks we took it all apart and put it back together and now it works…thanks a lot
March 17th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
rgarcia1965,
I guess it’s a Satellite 1415-S173 (not SS173), right? Yes I know. It’s an Agere Systems MiniPCI card. Toshiba part number is P000339520. Google the part number and you’ll find it.
March 17th, 2009 at 10:34 pm
Brooke,
It’s hard to tell what is wrong. Could be just a loose connection somewhere inside.
When I receive a dropped laptop for repair, first of all I open it up and reseat all internal cables, cards and connectors. Make sure the CPU and memory are seated correctly.
If you have nothing to lose, you can open it up (as it explained in the service manual) and try reseating internal cables and cards.
March 17th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
Do you know what type of mini pci wi-fi card I can use to install in my Toshiba 1415-SS173?
March 17th, 2009 at 10:47 am
Hi, I have a Dell XPS 1330. It had been working fine until it was accidentally dropped from a bed. After it was dropped it would not power on and the battery is fully charged and the power cord is also working properly. I have tried taking the battery out and powering it that way and such and I have not had any luck. When I push the power button it does not turn on or make any noises as if it even wanted to power on but there is a flicker on one of the side lcd lights. Do you think it is the motherboard??
Thanks
March 7th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
qua,
Usually a laptop starts acting like that when there is a problem with memory or motherboard.
So, you tried removing RAMs one by one and testing the laptop with each RAM module in different slots and it didn’t help. That tells me that most likely you have a bad motherboard.
March 6th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Hello, I apologize for the long post. I just wanted to describe the problem thoughrougly. I have (had??) a Toshiba Satellite M65 S9092. I normally used my laptop without the battery unless I really needed it. A week ago I needed the battery and used the battery until it is completely discharged. First problem occurred at this point. I was using a Linux system (first time with the battery)and although the power manager settings were set to hibernate when the battery charge levels are critical, it did not. My laptop just turned off as if I plugged the AC cord when on AC power only. Later when I tried to turn it on without the battery, I could not. The power led turned on for about 5-10 seconds and the fan starts working but noting else, then the fan and the power led turns off. After a number of tries I could boot with no problem. When I put the battery in there was no problem with the start up either. Once it worked, restarting was never a problem, it was as if the computer did not start when it cooled down. Then gradually it became harder to turn the laptop on even with the battery and finally it never turns on now. Just lights on, sometimes fan spins for a couple of seconds and occasionally there is the usual noise from the DVD drive. Then everything goes off. There is no problem with battery charging either because I can see the color coded led changes according to charge status. I disassembled it following your guide suspecting some dust/dirt in cooling system but no chance. So I suspected the motherboard. I removed all parts except cpu, graphics card, RAM (also tried removing the RAMs and changin slots etc.) and power cable (and the stuff on the motherboard that I could not remove like usb,PCI and so on). The sympom is the same, lights fan and nothing. I am still hoping there is some kind of a battery problem and not the motherboard since gradual increase of the problem resembled a battery dying. Please tell me there is a reason for this you can think of and of course a solution. My machine is still disassembled waiting for your reply:) Thanks in advance.
March 6th, 2009 at 9:21 am
Confused man,
So, when you push on the power button, do you see any other LEDs lighting up? Or the power LED light is the only one working even after you push on the power button?
March 6th, 2009 at 9:15 am
Hi,
My laptop totaly dead. I already fix with the dc power jack, the result LED for power is on, but still the laptop can’t on after so many time i push the on button. Can u help me in this matter?
Thanks..
March 4th, 2009 at 10:28 pm
gautam kumar,
I doubt that you can find a laptop motherboard PCB design layout. Usually, laptop manufacturers do not share information like that.
March 4th, 2009 at 1:05 am
hello sir,
I need a laptop motherboard pcb design layout through which i can identify the signal flow for each component and each circuitry.tis will help me to find the fault and to rectify the problem.
kindly give me some suggestions on laptop motherboard component testing.
also help me with the websites.
gautam kumar
February 28th, 2009 at 9:32 am
James,
There should be instructions posted on the manufacturer’s website. In most cases you just download a ZIP or EXE file to your computer and run it from there. Make sure the laptop is connected to the main power while upgrading the BIOS. Find and read instructions, it’s very important to follow the procedure correctly.
I don’t think so. If I understand correctly, your laptop still works fine, except the hibernation and stand by.
I would try upgrading the BIOS first and proceed from there. If your laptop is still under warranty, you can call customer support line for help.
February 27th, 2009 at 9:51 pm
Even if I downgrade it back to 1GB now, the problem is still there. There is indeed a new BIOS version available but I don’t know how to flash the bios.
Is there a chance of me damaging the components while installing the RAM?
February 24th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Guzunoi,
It’s possible that one of the capacitor went bad and has to be replaced.
I guess you can disassemble the laptop, remove the motherboard and search for any damaged components. You heard a short “pop” when it stopped working, so I assume it’s a blown capacitor. There is a chance to fix the motherboard by replacing the damaged capacitor.
February 24th, 2009 at 7:30 pm
Keeth,
It’s hard to tell. Could be anything.
Most likely you’ll have to replace the motherboard but before that take a look at this: How to fix dead Toshiba Satellite M35X laptop.
February 24th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
James,
What if you downgrade the laptop back to 1GB? Will it start working normal again?
Go to the manufacturer’s website and find out if there is a newer BIOS available. Try updating the BIOS.
February 24th, 2009 at 6:05 am
Hello
I have a Toshiba Satellite A215, been using it for 1 year and a half. One day, out of a sudden, it just made a short “pop” sound and crashed. Can’t turn it on ever since. More than this, the small lights showing me the AC connection, HDD usage, battery status etc. are also dead. Normally, the battery one was all the time on, even if the laptop was off-line. Plus I’ve noticed that when I plug the charger, it starts beeping. The charger is fine, it was tested on other laptops and I also tried using another charger for my laptop, without any result.
My warranty is gone, so I can’t rely on this. I brought the laptop to the official Toshiba service, they told me they have to replace the mother board (this would cost me more than a new laptop). They do not work with motherboards, they just replace them. My question would be if there is any chance to repair the motherboard (assuming that the power circuit chip is gone, or something like that). Do you know something about this?
Thank you for your time
February 19th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Hi,after all the good advice I read on this site, I thought I’d give it a shot. I have a M40x (= M35,M40) Toshiba laptop with some very strange issues. It has become kind of an obssession to get it working again.
The laptop seems to randomly decide wether to switch on when i press the power button or not. Sometimes it just boots (and once its running all is fine) but you never now if it’ll be the last time. To trace the problem, i completely stripped the laptop down to its mobo, cpu and ram. Power leds work, battery charge led sometimes (not a power jack problem). When i connect the power the fan gets a jolt of power every 5 seconds even if i don’t turn the laptop on. Sometimes i can hear some coil or capacitor resonance coming from several places on the mobo (mainly from under the cpu: the capacitors in the square formed by the socket). There is definately someting wrong with the mobo’s power electronics but i don’t know where to start. Do you have some advice as to how to pinpoint the problem. Which components/ICs?
Cheers,
Keeth
February 18th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
Hi. After upgrading my RAM to 3GB from 1GB, I’m having some problem with standby and hibernating. It used to be working fine as I frequently use the features to save some battery power. Now, when I tried to hibernate, it will show the black coloured “hibernating” screen and when it’s done, the laptop will turn off just like normal hibernating. But within 5 seconds later, it will turn on again (waking up from hibernating). As for standby, it will show the blue “Preparing to standby” and then the whole thing just goes off like that.
What do you think is the problem here? I’m pretty sure it’s not software related as I’ve tried reformatting my hard disk to no avail. A quick check in cmd using “powercfg /availablesleepstates” only show “Standby (S3) Hibernate” available while S1 and S2 are not available. The weird thing is that I don’t have this hibernating problem when using the battery instead of the AC power, even though the standby problem still exist. Did I accidentally damaged some parts while adding a 2GB RAM in? I don’t think so as I’ve done this quite a number of time.
February 8th, 2009 at 7:46 am
Oh yeah, another symptom that I found is that once the screen goes blank, it dont seemed to response to anything anymore. Not even ejecting the DVD drive, not even me simulating the shutdown through some keystrokes, except the power button of course.