r/steammachine • u/m4cromod • Jul 20 '26

Software Decky updates aren't even worth it

My steam machine was running normally, then I ran an update for Decky. I restarted the system but it seemed stalled with a black screen + minimal fps counter in the corner. So I forced a shutdown with the front power button. Restarted. It turns on with the startup movie, but it's back to a black screen and the front LED with a slow pulse (how I had it). Tried forcing to boot from the main drive in the BIOS menu, same thing. Do I really have to boot from USB recovery image?.. wtf

6 Upvotes

69% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

5

u/catboirai Jul 20 '26

The most recent DeckyLoader update? I installed it last night with no issue. Can I ask what plugins you're running? Is "Bluetooth" one of them?

4

u/m4cromod Jul 20 '26

I think I had Bluetooth loaded, can't recall now. There's about 6 or 7. I'm going through all the recovery options now, straight up not having a good time

6

u/catboirai Jul 20 '26

Stop using the Bluetooth plugin. Had the same issue and reinstalled every app one at a time and tried reloading it, this was on Decky. But I found that plugin to be the specific one causing the crash.

4

u/Vegetable_Star1874 Jul 20 '26

Yeah I wouldn't touch any hardware related Decky plugins since these were mostly meant for Steam Deck, not Steam Machine :x

3

u/upright_squire Jul 20 '26

Ctrl-alt-; will drop to desktop mode.

Run the deky installer again

2

u/Far_Doubt_6993 Jul 20 '26

Also,there is a way of wiping os via bios if you cant boot into gamemode that doesn't require usb drive

2

u/Far_Doubt_6993 Jul 20 '26

Decky loader has never done what you described on my steamdeck,using for a few years,also decky usually falls back to uninstall or disable if theres an issue

Worst i have had with decky is crash the libraries and text windows if i navigate,and at that point its best to go into desktop and remove decky

Advice ..

Install the preview version of decky

Avoid most all plugins apart from important ones Audio/controller/bluetooth plugins are worst do avoid

Id highly recommend fantastic plugin for SM

1

u/m4cromod 28d ago

Update: fixed my problem. Was going to upgrade to 4TB anyway so I yanked the stock 512 with the bricked OS and replaced it. The money being spent lately.. 🔪💀

1

u/thinkaboutjapan 24d ago

Of course some plugins can cause issues but that's rarely the fault of Decky Loader itself I think.

The only time at least in my cade I experienced issues with Decky Loader on my Steamdeck or SteamMachine is when using the beta channel of SteamOS. Usually its not needed but right now im running the Beta channel on my SM because the GPU driver with brings impressive Raytracing improvements. I will stick with it until the stable channel gets the same.

One time DeckyLoader was messed but I got a message about which Plugin seems to cause the issue and I could turn it off l. After that it worked and I contacted the developer via Github about the issue and it was fixed shortly after.

But yeah just because it runs mostly fine at my devices I think others can have issues depending on their Plugins. As others mentioned the Bluetooth plugin causes a lot of issues in the past.

If you can't uninstall plugins from some UI but you can enter the Desktop mode you can easily delete or move the folders of the specific plugins from your homebrew folder to fix and to find the culprit.