GPD Win 4 2025 - A blog on my pains for this little device

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Hi there!! This is a blog that I’ve been thinking to write for a while. The GPD Win 4s are great little devices, but are marred with absolute weird bugs that hinder their experience. The 2025 version of theirs is causing me so much pain and I need to figure out how to make it a usable experience. But right now I’m on holidays… so it will take me a bit to comment on how the ACPI is bugged up, and how the Audio devices and Bosch Accelerometer really messes up sleep.

Posting also because of video card giveaway :slight_smile:

https://forum.level1techs.com/t/the-4x-amd-radeon-ai-pro-r9700-128gb-giveaway/

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The 4x AMD Radeon AI Pro R9700 128gb Giveaway
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Enabling Windows 11 Xbox UI

While you can use a tool to enable the Xbox UI, there’s a manual way to enable the requisite options.

Note: This will not cover the use of riverar/physpanel (for emulating physical panel dimensions) because the GPD Win 4 IS a handheld.

  1. Get thebookisclosed/vive and run the following commands:
ViVeTool.exe /enable /id:52580392
ViVeTool.exe /enable /id:50902630
  1. Import the following registry key. This will tell Windows that the device is a handheld. This information is not supplied typically when you deploy your own Windows image.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\OEM]
"DeviceForm"=dword:0000002e
  1. Restart your computer
  2. Browse to the following Setting and enable:Settings > Gaming > Full Screen Experience.

References:

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Add Steam to the Xbox Full Screen Experience (FSE)

I’ve been doing a little bit of investigation with Process Monitor and I found out that the configuration for the Full Screen Experience is stored in the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\GamingConfiguration. Unfortunately it seems that it is looking at UWP names for the exact name of the starting app, and even if you replace the appropriate value GamingHomeApp you cannot have FSE to start with Steam.

Here’s an example of what I found on my registry:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\GamingConfiguration]
"CurrentSessionId"="<Redacted just in case>"
"GamingHomeApp"="Microsoft.GamingApp_8wekyb3d8bbwe!Microsoft.Xbox.App"
"StartupToGamingHome"=dword:00000001

What you can do is to actually get Steam to start regardless of Xbox FSE starting through UserInit (which runs regardless of whatever happens), and for that, you can use the following Registry file:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon]
"Userinit"="C:\\Windows\\System32\\userinit.exe,C:\\Path\\To\\Steam\\Steam\\steam.exe -bigpicture"

This will start both the Xbox FSE and Steam immediately afterwards. Note that there are double slashes \\ that get translated to a single slash when it’s imported to the registry itself.

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Weird bug - Windows in “dialog mode” starting up in full screen

<Placeholder for when I fix this. Starting with Windows 11 26H2, there is a bug where different fixed-size window apps like “Run” start in a “maximized state” rather than in the middle of the screen. Behaviour seems inconsistent across devices, but it does stop when connecting an external monitor. May be related to AMD drivers more than with Windows itself.>

<Edit: Similar to this item below>

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