When I picked up my steam deck the other day after having played it the night before the screen turned on, but none of the controller buttons, or touchpads would perform any actions. The touch scren, volume, and power buttons were fine.
I was able to use the touch screen to get to the controller section of settings and noted there was no controller detected. I compared this with another steam deck in the house which showed a neptune controller connected.
I contacted Valve support and they said my unit was out of warranty and that I could send it in for $185 or attempt a repair myself. I'm happy to perform the repair myself, but I havent got a clue what part may be bad. Valve support has not been very helpful on this, so I thought I would see if anyone here had any ideas.
Troubleshooting already done:
- Applied all updates
- Drained battery in entirety
- Battery storage mode from bios
- Factory reset
Edit: My assumption is that the built in controller connects through USB and that somehow whatever controller that uses is toast. I've been able to plug in other devices USB and those work though so who knows. In any event I'm going to pursue a replacement through the extended warranty benefit of my credit card. Thanks for all th suggestions.
Edit2: In case anyone stumbles across this post through a search engine or whatever, I have received my rma'd steam deck back and here were the technicians notes on the fix.
- Replaced LR control boards
- Software firmware was upgraded to newest version
- Reset unit to factory default settings
I am still unsure what caused the hardware failure, perhaps it was an issue with the charger which was connected (although other usb devices were totally fine).
Try upgrading the UEFI. Do NOT use the reset to default option on firmware 118. It's bugged and will cause additional problems.
If you're already on 118, I would first try to reapply it. If nothing changes, then downgrade to 116 and check. If functional again, upgrade back to 118.
Note: I sold my original Deck, so I can't be sure 118 is the current UEFI version.
I had previously used the restore defaults option on 118 while troubleshooting an unrelated problem, and that caused the sound and touchscreen to stop working. Downgrading to 116 and back to 118 fixed it.