What you need to know
- Valve knows a lot of people want to turn their Steam Deck into a portable Windows device.
- It has WiFi, GPU, and Bluetooth drivers available right now explicitly designed to help optimize your Windows-on-Deck experience.
- Audio drivers aren't ready yet, but they're coming.
Valve is well aware putting Windows on Steam Deck is a priority for many users, and it's keen on helping them in the endeavor. That's why Windows drivers are now available for download.
Currently, three types of drivers are live: WiFi, GPU, and Bluetooth. Audio drivers are still in the works but are on the way, according to Valve. Due to them not being available yet, "speakers and the 3.5mm audio port will not provide audio." That means you'll have to go with USB-C or Bluetooth for audio until AMD and co. get the drivers ready to go.
As for the state of dual-booting, here's what Valve has to say: "While Steam Deck is fully capable of dual-boot, the Steam OS installer that provides a dual-boot wizard isn't ready yet. This will ship alongside SteamOS 3 once it's complete." That means for now you'll have to wipe your Deck if you want Windows. Furthermore, only Windows 10 installation is currently supported. An upcoming BIOS update will make Decks friendlier to Windows 11, but for now, you'll have to settle for the second-newest operating system from Microsoft.
If you're wondering where you can actually download the aforementioned Deck drivers, the answer is: Directly from Valve. That hyperlink will take you right to the page with the links for each driver.
Valve also has recovery instructions available in the event you attempt to put Windows on your Deck and somehow bork the device.
