Suddenly today after restarting, my Deck stopped charging or showing the power light, while plugged in. After doing several combinations of holding the … and volume + button, it blinked, turned orange, and then white. I believe it was holding Power, … , and + through shutdown for a total of 20 seconds that did the trick. It is charging normally now, but when I unplug and then plug it in, the light goes back to orange. Then repeat, and it goes back to white and charges normally.
Does this mean the deck needs servicing? Should I reboot normally again, or do a system reset, or maybe just let it discharge completely?
Update: I checked it again, and the light was solid green at 95% which i thought was odd. I unplugged and the light began flashing green, and the battery said it was charging, but it was losing charge. It dropped down to 93, i did the 20 second combo again, powered on, unplugged another dozen times, flipped the plug around, and voila it turned solid white. And now it just seems to be completely normal once again.
So I guess the moral of the story is if your deck’s battery goes insane, keep smacking it until it fully recalibrates.
If you have an alternating orange and white power LED, it means that the Deck is struggling to charge at at least the rate that it would on the official chargers (40W or 45W).
This could be you using an alternate (and lower power than the official) power adapter, or it could have been an electrical issue where you were plugged in, and there was some issue with the current you were drawing. Or maybe the power adapter you’re using is on its last legs and isn’t acting correctly consistently.
For your future reference, here’s an old Reddit thread I found back when I got my OLED Steam Deck; I bookmarked it to keep the light codes handy.
I have two chargers and they’re both official, however I did plug it in once recently to a phone charger, which basically did nothing.
But anyway there’s definitely something wrong with it, because with both chargers, they only work in one direction, which I’ve never seen before with usb C. I’ve opened a ticket.
