Oculus is doing a black Friday sale for 2023. I have an Oculus Quest 2, but hadn’t used it in over a year. I plugged it in to charge it back up and browse the store. Unfortunately, the store app screen told me it couldn’t load the store.

I went to setting->Wifi and manually connected to my home network. Duh! (so I thought) Even after this, the store app was blank and would tell me it couldn’t display anything. Time to start debugging.

• The wifi would connect and said it had excellent wifi signal, but limited connectivity.
  • I tested my other wireless devices and they had no trouble connecting to the wifi and could browse the net normally.
  • I unplugged the mesh network repeaters around my house in case it was picking up a weak signal from one of those. No change.
  • I tried setting up my iPhone with as a wireless hotspot and connected to that. I got the same strong signal, but limited connectivity.
  • I checked the IP address of my Oculus in Settings, and I could ping the device just fine. If I turned the headset off, I couldn’t ping it. It seemed like it was connected ok.
  • I tried unplugging other devices from my wifi in case there was an IP conflict anywhere. Same problem.
• I tried connecting the quest with a USB cable but I still could not get updates nor see anything in the store app or main menu.
• Despite not being used for 2 years, when I went to system->updates, it showed no updates available. Something is fishy, there had to be updates.
• I opened the in-headset browser and it would tell me that I could not browse because the date was wrong. It was set to 5:00am Sept 17, 2037. Whoa.
  • There is NO way to change the date/time in the settings or anywhere else I could find.

It turns out, others have seen this issue too. Their Oculus fast forwards to the future mysteriously and then connectivity to the store/web/updates doesn’t seem to work after that. You need to get the date fixed, but there’s no obvious way to do it.

Solution: Factory Reset

In the end, I decided to do a factory reset (Hold the power and volume buttons while booting) because it had been well over a year since I used it last and I figured it would be good to have a clean start. However, there is the option of using side-loaded apps (see below).

Unfortunately, even the factory reset gave me a few headaches. First, the headset isn’t always obvious when it sleeps vs actually powers off. My first attempt I didn’t power off all the way and just woke from sleep and I didn’t get the reset menu holding the power+volume buttons down. I went to settings menu and shut the device down in the headset to be sure.

After that, I was then able to cold boot and get into the factory reset menu. I selected factory reset and waited for it to clean the device and the progress bar indicated the reset was complete. The screen went black (but still powered), but didn’t reboot. I let it set a few minutes, then decided to manually reboot with the power button. Fingers crossed.

The first reboot I got the meta logo, but shortly after that the screen went blank (still powered) but no reboot. I let it set for a few minutes then manually powered it off using the power button – again.

On the second reboot, I got the meta logo, and then it started animating. That’s a good sign. Then the welcome page came up and I could connect to wifi and start updating.

During the update phase (1/2) while the progress bar was moving, I took the headset off to read more instructions. When I put it back on to see how far it was, the display was a patterned garbled static. I took it off and let it sit for a minute, then tried again. The display came back up and the update phase 1 of 2 completed normally.

Sidequest

The bad part about a factory reset is you lose all your installed games. I had to go back in and start installing all of them again. What a pain, because it wasn’t a very fast process.

Another option is to load an app that will update your time via an alternate Oculus app store called Sidequest. Sidequest allows you to load your own apps – including an ‘Open Settings’ app that allows you to update your date/time.

ADB

The Oculus is really just an Android device underneath. This means if you have developer mode enabled and have the Android developer kit installed, you can use ADB commands. I haven’t tried this, but supposedly this will work:

adb shell am start -a android.settings.SETTINGS

If you have Sidequest loaded, you can use this:

adb shell am start -a android.intent.action.VIEW -d com.oculus.tv -e uri com.android.settings/.DevelopmentSettings com.oculus.vrshell/.MainActivity

Links:

• Similar issue: https://communityforums.atmeta.com/t5/Get-Help/Quest-2-randomly-changed-it-s-date-to-May-8th-2037-and-won-t/td-p/939041
• Factory reset your Oculus Quest 2: https://nordvpn.com/blog/how-to-factory-reset-oculus-quest-2/#:~:text=To%20factory%20reset%20your%20Oculus%20Quest%202%2C%20turn%20off%20your,That’s%20it!
• Using Sidequest to load date/time app: https://www.reddit.com/r/OculusQuest/comments/scapab/psa_is_your_headset_date_somehow_now_the_year/
• Changing date by sideloading apps: https://www.reddit.com/r/OculusQuest/comments/c5awp6/any_way_that_i_can_get_access_to_master_settings/