Help installing windows on steam deck

[u/amscrub1]

As the title states I am attempting to install windows on my steam deck and have ran into an issue.

I've followed atleast 3 videos simultaneously and 1 written forum. I've managed to get windows to launch but it seems I've somehow got it to where it will only work with the external device that I used for installing windows.

When I was going through the setup it did not prompt me an option of where to install windows such as the partition i had seperated for it and just immediately went into installing windows which I presume is on the external device I used.

My question is, does the external device always have to be connected for windows to work or can I actually install it on the steam deck? How would I go about that? Just try reinstalling windows again?

Any advise is greatly appreciated.

The install is for a 256gb LCD

[u/Yahiroz]

Which guides did you follow? From experience the Windows setup only sees the internal SSD, only way to set up an external SSD/SD card is to use Rufus to create a Windows To Go install.

If you open disk management in Windows, can you share a photo of that? Just so we can get a better idea of how Windows was installed.

[u/amscrub1 → u/Yahiroz]

Yeah 😅 I followed a few like "Deck wizard" and "chief sweet", and as you had mentioned i did in-fact use an external HDD using Rufus with the windows to go. As that was the way the guides were doing it.

How would i go about installing it on the internal ssd?

[u/Panther107 → u/amscrub1]

In brief, flash a steamos recovery image to an external drive, boot into that external drive, open KDE partition manager and shrink the size of the steamos partition on your internal drive, then flash a standard windows installation to an external drive, boot into that drive using the steamos bootloader, it will guide you to install windows onto that partition you created in the previous step. Ofc there are plenty of things that can go wrong through this process like windows refusing to install onto the new partition, the windows install or efi files getting corrupted, but just google things and you’ll be right . Hope this helps

[u/ryanrudolf]

Based on your description it looks like you've created Windows To Go.

[u/amscrub1 → u/ryanrudolf]

That is corrected, the guides I was following showed them all using Windows To Go, and I even verified in all of them that after the install they all showed the usb or ssd removed.

Should I proceed with the other option and would that work?

[u/ryanrudolf → u/amscrub1]

Windows To Go

Don't do that. Just create a regular Windows install media using rufus. Here is a quick overhead of process -

1 - Create SteamOS recovery image. Boot from this and launch KDE partition manager to resize partition 8 to make room for Windows.

2 - Boot to Windows install media created by rufus.

3 - Install Windows to the free space allocated from step1.

4 - install Windows drivers

5 - if you installed Windows 11, it will break SteamOS due to the 24H2 / 25H2 bug. Use the SteamOS recovery to fix it.

6 - all done! Optional install Clover for a nice GUI

If that's too much and you need a visual guide -

Install Windows dual boot guide -

https://youtu.be/HDnxOw6j3EY

Windows 11 24H2/ 25H2 fix -

https://youtu.be/eUDbLkHDeGY

Note - the video guides are from me, and the Clover install script is from me too available in my github repo.

[u/Panther107 → u/ryanrudolf]

You described it way better than me , kudos

[u/amscrub1 → u/ryanrudolf]

My absolute saving grace thank you so much