Help troubleshooting dead steam deack controller

Submitted ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨lounges@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨steamdeck@sopuli.xyz⁩

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

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Comments

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A_Very_Big_Fan@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I sometimes have this exact same thing happen to me too (including the touch screen + volume/power buttons working fine), but only on the desktop environment… And for me it gets fixed when I restart the system

I believe EmuDeck was the source of the problem, but if you factory reset the system that shouldn’t be an issue… So having that in mind, this smells like a hardware issue. (I’ve done absolutely no research, though, so take that with a grain of salt. I just thought it was interesting that our Decks had the same symptoms.)

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- hydroptic@sopuli.xyz ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Hey @lounges@lemmy.world (do pings even work on Lemmy?), do your buttons not work both in game mode and desktop mode?
  
  But yeah, the problem having survived a factory reset makes this feel more like a hardware issue, although it doesn’t hurt to check if the problem persists on “both sides” of the OS.
  
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  - lounges@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Buttons do not work anywhere no.
    
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hydroptic@sopuli.xyz ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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, but I haven’t looked into how the Deck’s hardware handles controller input.

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- lounges@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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.
  
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ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Inside there’s a long white ribbon cable that runs across the deck that goes over the top of the battery. I’d start with checking that cable for damage or corrosion and re-seating the connection at both ends. Unplug the battery first. If that doesn’t work I’d just go for re-seating every cable you can, looking for water damage, and making sure all the screws holding the boards down are snug.

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Grass@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I guess this is late based on your edit, but this happened to me and re-imaging as per official instructions fixed it for me. I ended up installing bazzite instead of steam os in the end though.

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PlasticExistence@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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