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Steam Deck gets stuck on "connecting" to WiFi among other weirdness, persists after factory reset. Basically a paperweight at this point, please help.

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.

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21 comments
21 comments