Can the Steam Deck run Windows?

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Valve’s Steam Deck officially launched late last month. The handheld gaming console was quickly met with mixed reviews, with one of the main gripes being that Windows was not yet available on Steam Deck.

But now, that has finally changed. Earlier this week, Valve announced on its website that it had added the necessary drivers needed to install Windows on Steam Deck.

Of course, you can only download Windows 10 for now. Windows 11 won’t be available until Valve adds a BIOS update to Steam Deck to provide TPM support.

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Resources and instructions for installing Windows on your device are located here. That is where you’ll find the new drivers for Windows on the device.

Steam Deck now has Windows, but it isn’t perfect

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As a note, Valve hasn’t developed any audio drivers quite yet. That means that if you install Windows on your Steam Deck, the speakers won’t work. Valve says it’s working with AMD to install those drivers.

But until the audio drivers are added, the Steam Deck’s speakers won’t be functional. Users should still be able to use the USB-C port or Bluetooth for audio, but full audio support isn’t yet available.

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Additionally, dual boot mode is not yet available on the device. If you want to install Windows on your Steam Deck, you will have to completely wipe its hard drive.

The device will eventually support dual boot so you can load up either Windows or SteamOS. But that is an update that is coming sometime in the future.

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It’s unclear exactly how well Windows runs on the device as of now. Hopefully, installing Windows on the device will unlock the ability to play even more games from Steam’s library.

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