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).
Hmm, looks like iFixit has a Steam Deck page, which could be helpful. The fact that none of the buttons work is a bit strange; I wonder how they’re attached to the motherboard? Feels like some sort of connector or controller problem (as in hardware controller, not game controller 😄), but I haven’t looked into how the Deck’s hardware handles the button inputs
My initial thought was software, but after all the above stuff I did pop the back off to check for any burned out components, water, and to make sure all the cables were seated well. Everything looked fine though.