Valve hasn’t locked down the Steam Deck, so you’re free to modify it however you wish.
That also means you’re free to break things.
What do you do if the situation goes sideways?
Here’s how to restore SteamOS to its default parameters and leave your Deck good as new.
What Is a Recovery Image?
Valve makes them available for download directly from the Steam website.
How to Prepare a Bootable USB Stick
How do you get this image onto your Steam Deck?
you oughta create a bootable USB stick.
So if you haven’t already, get your hands on a flash drive.
As part of this process, you will completely wipe the contents of the USB stick.
Then you will likely need to get your hands on specialized software.
There are several tools to help youcreate a bootable USB drive on Windows.
Also replace/dev/sdXwith the correct drive, such as/dev/sdb.
If your USB drive has a USB-C connector, then you’re all set.
Plug in your flash drive, shut down your Steam Deck and then press thePowerbutton while holding theVolume Downbutton.
Let go ofVolume Downafter you hear the chime.
This process will turn on your rig and bring up the Boot Manager rather than the usual Steam interface.
If your flash drive doesn’t have a USB-C connector, you’re not out of luck.
If you have a USB-C adapter, plug your drive into that and then your Deck.
If you don’t have an adapter, that’s where a dock comes in.
This tells the Steam Deck to boot from your USB drive.
The top option is your gadget’s internal memory.
Clicking this would initiate the standard boot into SteamOS.
Let’s go over these to check that you’re selecting the right option for you.
Your system configuration prefs will also go away.
Reimage Steam Deck
This performs a factory reset.
Clicking here will proceed to wipe everything from your rig.
This can get you back up and running without having to re-download all of your games.
This is the most technical option and not the one most people would need.
Should You Expect to Have to Fix Your Steam Deck?
But there’s so much more that you might do with a Deck.
