Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
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.