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Quest 3 was stuck on finding position in room and now stuck on black screen

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
March 28, 2025
102 replies
25457 views

Hi,

I powered on my quest 3 headset and was getting a message "finding position in room" continuously so I did a factory reset and I'm now only getting a black screen after startup with some background sound.

I can see the meta horizon label and hear the startup sound when booting but then it quickly goes to a purple and blueish gray picture before going black. I have no other menu available and I've factory reset 3 times. I see other board messages with similar problems so it starting to sounds like there is no fix yet?

Thank you!

Best answer by thebreadtruck

Yup, I bought my Q3 at launch, support told me it's out of warranty so I'm *ship* out of luck. They then offered me to buy a refurbished one. Like "yeah you know how you know how we sold you a product brand new that won't last more than 1.5 years? How about buying another one but this time it's USED?!" What an abysmal disappointment. Sorry the same thing happened to you dude. Best we can do is share our story with others on reddit.

MetaStoreHelp

Community Manager

Hi oc24gov2,

Thanks for reaching out on our forums and bringing this problem to our attention.

We would like you to reach out to us directly in order to investigate this further.

Please select our name to get to our profile page, or click here: https://metaque.st/CommunitySupport. Next, click "Send a Message" to privately message us! Please remember, you must be signed into the community first to send us a private message.

Best wishes,
Meta Quest Support

If you're the author of a thread, remember to mark a reply as the Accepted Solution to help others find answers!

K

kingmossop

Inspiring

It happend to mine ..I found removing the face surround foam and then the rubber surround around the lenses worked ..I've put it all back and now all working for now .not sure why but this hase fixed the issue for me ....untill it happens again ..meta I have lost my faith in you guys now this shouldn't happen ...and you've not been helpful.at all fixing it ...

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TheMightyHermit

Participant

Same issue here

O

oc24gov2Author

Participant

Yeah I've tried everything but nothing has worked so far. Working with the support team now. I'll post a solution if we ever find one.

MetaStoreHelp

Community Manager

Hi there!

We're just touching base with you as we've not received any private message from you. The reason we asked to DM is, the information we'd seek may contain sensitive information. However, we believe, everything is alright at your end and the issue has been resolved since you've not contacted us. If you still need assistance on this however, please don't hesitate to private message us! For this, please select our name to get to our profile page, or click here. And, you can click on "Send a Message" to DM us! Please remember, you must be signed into the community first to send us a private message.

If you're the author of a thread, remember to mark a reply as the Accepted Solution to help others find answers!

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oc24gov2Author

Participant

Ok, I just sent a private message.

K

kingmossop

Inspiring

Please let me know if you get this fixed..mines the same

M

Mryaryar69

New Participant

I'm also having the same issue

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oc24gov2Author

Participant

I'm trying to work with the support team now. I'll post a solution if there is one.

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thebreadtruck

New Participant

Literally the exact same thing. Support told me to cloud backup my settings before factory reset, but my controllers didn't work because o this error. I factory reset and got this same black screen, now i've lost all my settings/saves/videos for no reason.

O

oc24gov2Author

Participant

I didn't even get told to do a cloud backup for my settings. I guess since my device is bricked it really doesn't matter at this point as I'm still irritated that I only got a little over 1 year worth of use. Guess it could be worst and I could have only gotten a day, haha. Good luck to you!

T

thebreadtruckAnswer

New Participant

Yup, I bought my Q3 at launch, support told me it's out of warranty so I'm *ship* out of luck. They then offered me to buy a refurbished one. Like "yeah you know how you know how we sold you a product brand new that won't last more than 1.5 years? How about buying another one but this time it's USED?!" What an abysmal disappointment. Sorry the same thing happened to you dude. Best we can do is share our story with others on reddit.

K

KaeTheKorean34

New Participant

Same issue here. Haven’t tried a factory reset yet.

O

oc24gov2Author

Participant

Hi Kae, I'd maybe hold off on trying the factory reset since it seems like it has led to the headset becoming permanently unusable afterward for some of us. If support tells you to or there's just no other solution I guess you could try it but I'd say only as the absolute last resort.

B

BenDowswell

Participant

Exactly the same thing happened to me about a year ago. Customer support sent me a refurbished one. Now, after less than a year of use, the refurbished one is showing the same exact error message. This is absurd. I played Thrill of the Fight 2 last night, hung the headset up to charge it, and now it's totally unusable. There is zero quality control with this company. I am furious

A

Anonymous

BenDowswell I think your issue maybe down to the games that you play -

Quest 3: Problems with sweat

Solved: 4 headset replacements in 4 months

B

BenDowswell

Participant

Anonymous You're absolutely right. Thanks for providing those links. I use exercise apps probably 10% of the time, maybe less. But both times the headset failed was after sweating inside the headset. That must be the culprit

S

SpaceBass11

New Participant

TL;DR Had black screen tracking error. Controllers not detected. I factory reset my headset, then stripped the headset and controllers down to bare bones. No head strap, no face plate, no controller covers, no controller battery covers. Booted headset to initial setup screen. Put brand new batteries in both controllers. Rebooted headset. Initialized headset and everything worked.

Posting here as I also ran into this infamous black screen with no tracking error, but I was able to fix my headset, which I'll get to. During troubleshooting I had hand tracking enabled so I was able to click use without tracking options, but controllers were not detected. For my case I learned both my controller batteries were dead. I had only replaced one controller battery but could not get it detected. Hand tracking worked fine and pass-thru would only work if I put headset in travel mode. You could see in settings menu headset tracking was toggled off and could not be toggled on. However, if in travel mode you could try and turn it on but it would take you back to the black tracking error screen. I used developer mode adb while hooked to PC to pull logs. Tried couple of adb commands like toggle boundary and clear cache, then factory reset the headset. Upon setup it would not detect my controllers, even the one controller with good battery.

At this point I took the custom head strap off the headset and the face plate off, so it was just the headset itself. I took the rubber covers off the controllers and left the battery covers off. After that, I put a new battery in my second controller (still no detection in headset) and rebooted the headset. Upon reboot both controllers were detected and I was able to initialize the headset. Was it because I took everything off the headset/controllers, or because both needed new batteries at same time, or a combination... I don't know. Haven't seen that error before with dead controllers though.

I'm interested in the sweat and/or condensation theory. I haven't seen a single photo or video to show moisture on the headset itself.

Condensation occurs when humid air contacts a surface that is colder than the air's dew point:

- Warm air (like vapor from your skin) carries moisture.

- When it touches a cooler surface, the air cools down.

- Cooler air can’t hold as much moisture → moisture condenses into water droplets on that surface.

Inside the Quest 3 = Warm/Hot

- Internal components generate heat (from the SoC, sensors, displays).

- Limited airflow and close skin contact raise internal temperature even more.

- As a result, the interior surfaces are typically warmer than your face.

So if the surface (like the Meta Quest 3) is hotter than your face:

- No condensation will occur.

- The water vapor stays in the air.

- It may evaporate even faster due to heat.

What COULD Cause Moisture Issues

- Using the headset in extremely humid environments (e.g. 100% humidity in Florida summer)

- Rapid temperature changes (like moving from cold air conditioning into a hot space instantly)

The "Capillary Sweat Damage" Claim:

"The reason for the failures seems to be that sweat seeps between the two parts of the facial interface due to capillary action. It collects there, eventually penetrating through the mounting holes into the headset and can damage the electronics."

This theory, while technically plausible, lacks direct evidence such as photos or videos. If sweat is the issue here due to CAPILLARY then for this to be true:

- Sweat would need to visibly accumulate between the layers of the facial interface.

- You would expect the area behind the interface to be noticeably wet upon removal.

- A substantial amount of liquid would be required for capillary action to draw sweat through the interface seams and into mounting holes — then somehow reach and damage internal circuitry.

C

ChuchoTheCatLord

New Participant

Thanks I'll give ir a try, mine worked after a month of not using it with the battery drained but a couple of days later it went back to the same thing, humidity here is comparable to Florida (I'm in Puerto Rico). I happen to not be able to do the controller thing, because of where I am, Meta doesn't ship, so when my left controller died to a firmware update (yeah you read that right, it was working then after updating firmware it died) I was still in warranty but they wouldn't ship so I had to buy pro controllers because those would ship from Amazon and Meta doesn't sell Q3 controllers separately on other sites. This was frustrating enough.. couple months later I get this... I'm so done w meta

C

ChuchoTheCatLord

New Participant

Same thing here, I happen to also be in a US Territory so on top of not having any warranty because I bought at launch, they also won't ship here even if we use the same carriers. I bought a Quest 2 which has gone through some rough times and still works, but comfort and clarity on Q3 were so good, not gonna lie this is a huge disappointment and discouraging to invest in any Meta product in the future.

Note: I let my battery drain and didn't turn the unit on for about a month, charged and turned it on and seemed to work like nothing had happen, few days later.. same issue as before.. whatever it is, seems to be a software / firmware issue and they don't seem to care.. a pitty.

K

kingmossop

Inspiring

Yup same thing just happend to me also ....I'm reading a lot that there is no fix ...I've not dropped my head set i hardly use it it sits on the floor the whole of my game world started to spin then I got the error now I just get the error finding position in room ..wtaf

M

MandarkXX

New Participant

Well, same thing just happened to me last night. Completely stuck. I was hoping to find a solution somewhere, but so far, all I'm reading is that I'm fvcked. 😡

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