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I purchased a Steam Deck OLED about a year ago hoping to play my favorite video games outside of a Microsoft environment (the Xbox Live costs were getting annoying).

Everything worked fine for a while until EA games stopped launching via Steam OS. This fact motivated me to look into dual booting with the Windows 10 edition that’ll be supported for another 5-7 years, despite the commercial editions losing support in October 2025. I followed this guide, and got W10 dual boot up and running with Ventoy and GParted.

Fast forward to 2025, and the new Battlefield 6 beta just launched. I was hoping to try the beta out knowing that I probably wouldn’t buy the game (all BFs since BF1 are COD trash) and that BF4, BF1, and BFV all launch in W10 on Deck.

But then I receive this error: “SecureBoot is not enabled. Learn how to use SecureBoot at [go.ea.com/SecureBoot] (111)”.

I’ve done some research to try to figure this out, following EA’s own guide to enable Secure Boot:

Running msinfo32 shows that my BIOS Mode is UEFI, and Secure Boot State is Off.

Running tpm.msc shows that “The TPM is ready for use” under Status.

Entering Disk Management, right clicking on C:, selecting Properties, Hardware, Micron_2400_MTFDKBK1T0QFM, Properties, Volumes, Populate, and my Partition style is shown as GUID Partition Table (GPT).

Now I enter Advanced Startup to view BIOS settings, Troubleshoot, Advanced options, UEFI Firmware Settings, Restart, and the Steam Deck boots into the InsydeH2 BIOS menu.

From here, EA says these BIOS settings are specific to the manufacturer, so I go exploring. Under Setup Utility, I see Main, Advanced, Security, Power, Boot, and Exit menus to the left side of the screen.

When I click through these, I see the following:

  • BIOS Release Date = 08/01/2024

  • VBIOS FW Version = 113-AMDSphJupiter

  • Current TPM Device = TPM 2.0 (FTPM)

  • TPM State = All Hierarchies Enabled, Owned

  • Quick Boot = Enabled

  • Quiet Boot = Enabled

I don’t see any specific mention of “Secure Boot”.

I have read that the only way to enable Secure Boot is to go through these steps. I don’t have the time or energy to do that now. Maybe this weekend.

Has anyone else gone through similar troubleshooting?

Is the above the right path forward for my use case?

Are there any risks I should keep in mind if I want to enable Secure Boot?

What ways can I protect myself from my n00b carelessness?

Thanks for your time!! I don’t post much, but all the reddit posts out there failed to answer my specific problem. And who on Lemmy doesn’t like more content?

  • Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
    2·
    3 days ago

    I’m starting to see how much of a trap it is!

    I’m interested in multi booting different distros. Any guides on how to wipe my current deck and start over? I’ve heard Bazzite and PopOS are pretty slick, and I still want to keep SteamOS.

    Yeah fuck corpos!!!

    I saw that comment. I’ll look into it!

    • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      21·
      3 days ago

      Well, afaik, PopOS! does not have a … handheld PC oriented flavor, so… you could get it to work, but likely only via a dock, keyboard and mouse and monitor.

      It may partially work, to some extent, as a handheld, but it won’t be able to… leave desktop mode, basically, unless you manually figure out how to set up everything you need for that game mode transition.

      Bazzite on the other hand… comes with all that prebuilt in, is designed around that as a fundamental principle.

      https://docs.bazzite.gg/General/FAQ/

      https://docs.bazzite.gg/General/Installation_Guide/Installing_Bazzite_for_Steam_Deck/?h=install

      Bazzite does replace SteamOS though.

      It keeps the gamemode as a thing you can transition to, but under the hood, its Fedora, not Arch… but you can set the desktop mode up with the same KDE style if you want to, or go with GNOME if you wanna try that.

      EDIT: More clarity IRT dual booting SteamOS and Bazzite on a Deck.

      You can do this, more easily than either with Windows…

      But it’ll require some extra configuration.

      Basically, the way SteamOS and Bazzite will want to partition your harddrive, your onboard SSD… are fairly different.

      IIRC, Bazzite uses BTRFS, and SteamArch is in I think Ext4… and the way they setup paritions for pagefiles or lackthereof is different.

      You could get it working, its not impossible, but it might be way easier to just get a microsd card and run a live version or fully install a whole OS to a microsd card and run it from that, on a Deck, as a sort of preview… and then just pick one.

      Also, it is totally possible to set up a microsd card with ventoy or just one other os install image… you don’t have to use an actual usb thumb drive.