The Steam Machine that suffered a “red line of death” last week that was thought to indicate a serious graphics card issue has miraculously sprung back to life.
In an update to the very popular original thread on Reddit, user me_hill said they tried leaving the machine powered off for 30-minute intervals over the course of a day, which didn’t work, but when they left it unplugged overnight and then tried some “BIOS stuff” that other people suggested, “it booted up immediately without issue”. Hooray.
User me_hill was the first to encounter what looked to be a Steam Machine hardware failure last week. Their troubles began after downloading a system update, which caused the machine to crash, displaying half a red line on the LED bar on the front panel, which players have dubbed the ‘red line of death’ in a nod to the infamous Red Ring of Death error suffered by Xbox 360.
Although me_hill didn’t specify what “BIOS stuff” they actually did to bring their Steam Machine back to life, multiple users left comments on the original post that suggested entering the Steam Machine’s BIOS to essentially force a full reset.
“I feel stupid about even posting this now, especially since it blew up a bit, but I was tired and irritable after a long day of work, and an ominous GPU error code wasn’t exactly the seamless plug-and-play experience I had hoped for,” the Reddit user explained.
“But I guess if anyone encounters the same error, don’t panic like I did, just let it sit for a few hours and it will somehow sort itself out. Anyway, I’m sorry for the false alarm, thanks to everyone who suggested solutions, and now I’m going to spend this weekend playing Crusader Kings until my eyes hurt,” they said in closing.
Hopefully that’s the end of that.
