- Valve has submitted a fix for the ‘red death line’ issue
- A small number of bug reports have appeared online
- Leaving the PC unplugged overnight seems to help
There is good news if your newly purchased Steam Machine has been hit by the ‘red line of death’ – where the PC shows a constant red indicator light and refuses to start up (reminiscent of the old Xbox ‘red ring of death’).
A few reports of this problem have surfaced in recent days, although it’s not clear exactly how widespread this problem is. However, if you’ve been hit by the frustrating bug, Valve now has some official advice for you.
In detailed troubleshooting instructions posted to Reddit, the official Steam hardware feedback account advises affected users to work through a series of steps that include unplugging the Steam machine and forcing a full restart.
It’s worth saying that the Redditor who originally reported the issue was able to get their Steam Machine up and running again by leaving it unplugged overnight – so an effective fix may not require all of the official instructions.
Here’s what you need to do
Well, Steam Machine was pretty cool for the 20 minutes it worked from r/steammachine
If you find the ‘red line of death’ on your Steam machine, these are the troubleshooting steps to follow, according to Valve:
- Unplug the machine, then press the power button a few times. This ensures that all stored energy in the PSU is discharged. You may see the power indicator LED blink for a moment.
- Plug the machine back in. Note whether your power LED is lit (breathing pattern) white or not. If so, please submit a Steam Support ticket and tag me, or send me a chat request with the ID.
- Hold down the power button for ~6 sec. You should see the power indicator LED (dot) blink for a moment. Release the power button when you do so.
- The power indicator LED starts changing some color codes. These are designed to allow you to choose different recovery/troubleshooting options. When the LED turns green, briefly press the power button. This should perform a full ‘CMOS reset’.
- On next boot, you should see the RGB bar as blue – it may take a little longer to boot due to memory retraining.
So there you have it – if your Steam machine is working again, the Steam Support account requests that you tag it on Reddit. If not, the next step is to create a support ticket so the issue can be investigated further.
It’s possible that a number of users have already experienced this problem and solved it without turning to Reddit or social media, but it’s not something you want to see after paying a premium price for the gaming PC.
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