Toshiba laptop battery

The center pin of the DC barrel connector inside the laptop is a very common failure, sometimes breaking off altogether if the laptop if dropped while plugged in or if somebody trips over the cord. If the pin is missing but your still getting intermittent power, it must be stuck inside the connector coming from the AC adapter and making contact with the broken part on the inside when it’s plugged in tight. If the pin is loose to the touch, if it moves easily if nudge it with a pencil point or a toothpick, it’s probably hanging on by a thread and responsible for intermittent or limited power. The ground contacts for the outside of the barrel can theoretically fail as well if it’s a lousy design, but I haven’t come across it yet. Replacing the connector inside the laptop, whether it’s on the mainboard or on a special power section board, is one of the most labor intensive repairs a relative newbie can hope to carry out successfully. You need a lot of patience to disassemble the notebook to the point where you can desolder the old connector and a quality soldering iron with a fine tip. The connectors themselves can usually be found online for cheap, but it depends on the brand and whether the DC connector is proprietary.