I honestly cannot figure this one out and searching online and the steam troubleshooter have been no help.
about a week ago my Deck stopped connecting to my WiFi as I was playing a game on it, one minute it’s fine, then the wifi connection is gone. I go to reconnect, it gets stuck on “connecting to [SSID]” and it will stay there for several minutes and say “failed to connect” and prompt me to re-enter my password. Double check password, it’s all good. Restart router, problem persists. Restart Deck, problem persists. Check my other devices, everything is connecting fine. Check if Steam is working on my laptop, it’s fine. I give up on tinkering with it because I’ve got a big trip coming up and I’d rather play Fallout 4 and Risk of Rain 2 offline than play nothing at all.
cut to my trip, deck connects to airport wifi, in-flight wifi, hotel wifi, all with no problem, no sign anything is wrong. Deck works perfect.
get home, deck still won’t connect to my WiFi, “fine I’ll just play RoR2 in bed offline” game says its launching but then never does, just gets stuck there. Try other games, and same thing happens with every single one.
“maybe a factory reset will do the trick? I’m desperate enough at this point” I go to settings and factory reset. It says “preparing 0%” for a second and then just gives up on resetting. “oh, so this thing is FUCKED fucked” I turn it off and hold the quick menu button to get into the boot menu and factory reset from there. It works, deck is reset, I try to connect to wifi… same fucking problem.
I have no ideas, im willing to try anything at this point. my Deck is basically a paperweight. i had a vanilla setup going too, no developer mode, no deckyloader, nothing at all. I’d poke around with my router but that shit is LOCKED DOWN by my ISP so I can’t change shit, and that doesn’t really explain all the weird shit it’s been doing offline, like with not launching games or factory resetting it. Please help, this is my main gaming device.
If your Deck connects to everything but your home connection, then yeah, it’s very likely your router being the issue here. Assuming you did not have any config changes or firmware updates there then it may be dying, but I’d at least check the settings for some clues, maybe change the wifi frequency if it is fixed.
Is this an OLED deck? The OLED deck wireless chip can connect to wifi 6 networks, but when it first came out there were a lot of issues with the Deck wifi chip stopping working at all when you would connect to wifi 6 networks with specific wifi 6 features turned on. After trying to connect to wifi 6 network, the wifi would stop working altogether until a reboot.
Valve released some updates for the OLED deck that fixed it for me, but the issue you’re describing sounds a lot like this. It’s possible your router updated with some new firmware and enabled a new wifi feature that’s crashing the deck’s wifi chip. It’s also worth mentioning that SteamOS recovery image doesn’t have the later wifi fixes that valve released, so if you try to use a recovery usb and connect to a wifi 6 network you’ll have issues.
Some network changes you can try to do (if you’re able to with your ISP router) are separating your wifi into 2.4 and 5ghz networks, and after a deck restart try connecting to the 2.4ghz network (make sure the deck isn’t set to automatically connect to the 5ghz channel). If that works, you can go through router settings and look for wifi 6 (AX) features and try turning them off. If you can’t do anything with the router, you’ll either need to get your ISP to issue you a new router (in case that one’s defective) or buy your own router and use it instead (this is usually the better option anyways, most ISPs charge you a rental fee on routers that’s a way worse deal than buying your own).
You can also do something like buy a wifi extender, the cheap ones are $10-15 and 2.4Ghz only. Make sure it has a different name from the main network (something like network_ext) and it should let you connect your deck.
You need to get your ISP to help troubleshoot the issue with your router. If the Steam Deck works fine on other networks that’s a very strong sign that it’s not the Deck that’s the issue.
Most public libraries have WiFi or computers that you can use in a pinch, leverage those as much as possible. You are paying for those services via taxes, they are yours.
Have you contacted valve support?
You could try to install a different OS that’s made for the deck. Bazzite for example also has a steam deck version.
You could also try booting something from MicroSD so it’s easier to revert.
Seconding contacting Valve support, too.
My laptop isn’t charging anymore so installing a different OS isn’t possible, fuck me right? when it rains it pours. I’ll contact support in the morning.
Not necessarily. If your phone uses usb-c, and if you get a usb-c flash drive, you can make a bootable USB with your phone with the flasher app. The reviews are pretty mixed for it for whether or not it works, but could be worth a shot.
Try turning off Bluetooth. Try turning off ipv6 in desktop mode. Could also be interference from electronics near your router or Deck, like a computer or your neighbour’s wifi.
2 things to note:
When offline, switch into steam offline mode to launch games, gets round some of the hanging on launch issues
Try connecting to WiFi from the steam decks desktop mode? Probably a router issue though.
