Controls on left side stopped working [solved]

[Lewallen]

Posting this here in case anyone else has this problem. tl;dr solution was to open the Steam Deck, unplug and replug the "C_L" ribbon cable on the left button board.

I was playing a game when I heard a beep tone, and most of the buttons on the left side of the Steam Deck stopped working. The touchscreen still worked, and the right side buttons and both touchpads mostly still worked, as did external Bluetooth mouse and keyboard. I rebooted the Steam Deck, tried going to desktop mode, tried leaving it completely off overnight while recharging, rebooted several more times, and it's still having the same problem. I went into the controls test menu and was able to see that the only control on the left side of the SD that registered was the touchpad.

I emailed Valve support and unfortunately my SD is out of warranty (it's just over 2 years old now), so my only option was to send it in for repair, estimated between $125 and $185. Before I sent it in, I googled around and found a few other people with similar problems, some on the Steam forums and some on reddit. None were exactly the same issue, but I figured I should at least open up the SD and see if anything was obviously physically broken.

iFixit suggests the problem may be with the left button board, but unfortunately that part is not available for replacement, despite many people asking for it to be stocked for at least 2 years... I opened it up anyway, didn't see anything apparently broken, but decided to at least disconnect and reconnect the main ribbon cable running to the left button board (see step 16 on this iFixit guide https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Steam+Deck+Left+Button+Board+Replacement/148931, the cable labeled "C_L").

After starting the Steam Deck back up, all the buttons are working again. I'm glad I didn't spend $125 to find out it could be fixed by unplugging and replugging a cable! Hopefully it keeps working, and this helps someone else too.

[justinvmurphy1981]

All I have to say is thank you so much! I just spent a week trying to get this fixed and tried literally everything, including flashing the BIOS to the latest version, but nothing worked. Steam support told me I’d have to pay $185 to get it fixed since it was out of warranty. At that point, I was one click away from buying either the SD OLED or the ROG Ally X.

Then, I figured I’d take one last look to see if anyone else had encountered this issue, and boom – I found your post. You saved me from spending $699 to $899 on a new device!

Thank you again for sharing this fix – you’re a lifesaver!