Black Screen & fans spinning (SOLUTION)

[Sir Lunchalot]

Hello,
I just had a Problem with my steam deck a couple hours ago where it refused to boot up normally. It just showed a black screen and the fans started spinning.

Trying out any of the button combos (see below) did not work for me.
... + power button
Press power button for 12s
b + Power button

What did work tho, was draining the battery by letting the fans spin. Luckily I stopped charging the deck after like 5 consecutive boot up tries, so the discharging process only took like 2h or so.

After the fans stopped spinning, I plugged it in again and it booted up normally without me pressing the power button or any button at all.

Leaving these here for anyone experiencing this problem in the future.

Has this already been addressed? because I hope Valve will fix this.
It's super scary when you let your deck laying around, forget to charge it and just want to boot it up normally. I legit thought my deck was dead..


XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX 31st of December 2024:

EDIT: Another possible solution, if my solution doesnt work, by:

- Dave McAlias, 30th of December

Maybe this will help someone, or at least makes it easier to find :)

[jdodge1090]

I’m having the same issue. I logged a steam support ticket, but I will try this! Fingers crossed.

[Sir Lunchalot]

Good luck! I hope this method worked for you

[S_habala]

Thanks man, that was the only solution that worked for me, I had exactly the same problem as you

[erstgutertoosti]

Good evening everyone,
I'm having the same issue. But now the fans doesn't work too.

[Sir Lunchalot]

Originally posted by erstgutertoosti:

Good evening everyone,
I'm having the same issue. But now the fans doesn't work too.

You mean now your deck doesn't turn on at all? It's just a black screen without a spinning fan?

[Lex-Man]

Just had this problem and the preposed solution worked for me. Although I had fully charged my deck so it took like 16 hours to switch off.

[semm]

+1 worked for me aswell

[Krusty.!]

+1 this happened to me and this worked for sure.

[NoxiousFumes]

+1 this happened to me, this solution worked perfectly.

[STULLEK0VSKI]

+1
took me over 8 hrs (went to bed) to discharge.

steam deck was empty after idle in stand by, plugged it in to charge and went back 2hrs later to see the black screen and the fan spinning. :/
no workaround with off/on, key combos or cable in/out worked. so let it blow over night, this morning I just plugged in the charger and boot logo etc was back again. my heart.

my prevention: made a shell script with shutdown -h +180 (too old to play more than 3hrs) on desktop mode at autostart. or think of to shutdown it by yourself. hope it works.
next time: don't let it charge again for 2hrs to wait a night.. ;)

[Litespeed]

Same thing has happened to me 3-4 times now.

[BoswachterBierBop]

+1 Thank you! This solution helped after trying several other possible solutions.

[Dave McAlias]

FASTER SOLUTION (and possible cause?

QUICK SOLUTION:

While your Steam Deck is plugged in, but powered off, hold down the volume up button (+) and the "•••" button (the one underneath the right trackpad) at the same time, for about 10 seconds or so.

While still holding these two buttons, unplug the steam deck from power.

(I used one hand to hold the two buttons and the other hand to unplug. In retrospect, I should have used two hands on the buttons and my foot to unplug from the wall)

This will put your steam deck into Battery Storage Mode. The next time you plug it up to power, it will automatically boot when plugged in.

After that, you should be able to shut it off and back on with no issue. I think it automatically removes itself from Batter Storage Mode as well.

PROBABLY CAUSE:

This apparently has something to do with a faulty power button? I'm not sure if that's true, because it occurred for me after a system update when I didn't even touch the power button. Also, after doing this fix, the power button works fine.

POSSIBLE PREVENTATIVE ACTION (untested, and with a tradeoff):

After fixing the issue, hold Volume Up (+) button while powering on the device to get to the menu.

Choose "Setup Utility", "Power", and set "Auto boot on AC attach" to "Enabled"

In theory, if this ever happens again, you can boot your SD by attaching power instead of by pushing the button, bypassing the issue entirely. The tradeoff is that your SD will boot EVERY time it's attached to power. So if you don't want that to happen, just do the other solution mentioned above.

@Sir Lunchalot - if you're able to update your original post, please add this so people don't have to scroll to find it.

[Watermelon Daiquiri]

I'm having this problem too, except mine's happening after a full system freeze that it partially recovered from (though usb peripherals no longer worked) and then when I tried to turn it off, it froze on the spinning orb and no button press turns it off. Did valve really design this to where the power button supervisor is reliant in some way on the OS? I also have issues where the power button only works to turn it off/on over a very small time range and it takes a few tries to get the timing exactly right...

edit: finally after trying it a bunch more with various timings it finally turned off after being held down for maybe 3 seconds and released. Of course, now it refuses to turn on no matter what I do...

[Dave McAlias]

@Watermelon Daiquiri
Did you try what I'd just posted before you?

1. Turn off the SD
   
2. Plug it into power
   
3. Hold Volume up and (•••) for about ten seconds
   
4. While still holding those buttons, remove the power cable
   
5. Release the buttons
   
6. Plug in the power cable to auto-boot