Steam Overlay causes entire PC to freeze and black screen when used while gaming

[Tea Garden]

As the title of the topic suggests, this is a critical issue that appeared less than a week ago. I initially noticed this while playing CS2, I always look through my teammates' profiles when preparing for a match, and during this I got a complete system freeze, no any key combination worked and even the mouse cursor froze, after which the entire image disappeared and the screen turned black without the possibility of recovery, but at the same time I can hear all the sounds. And only rebooting via the button on the PC case helps.

I created a topic on the CS2 forum where I received answers from several people with different hardware about the same issue: https://steamcommunity.com/app/730/discussions/0/594023708174121698/


What I have managed to understand during this time:

1. This does not happen always. For example it may not happen during the preparation for the match, but if you use the overlay during the game, you can still encounter a complete freeze of the computer and a subsequent black screen

2. The Discord overlay for some reason can save from this, I was not able to reproduce this with the Discord overlay enabled (most likely the Nvidia overlay can also "fix" this)

3. Probably this is not related to the Nvidia drivers, because I am not using the latest driver version (576.02), and I did not update the drivers before this started. And also people with a different driver version wrote about same issue.

4. According to the answer of a person from the forum, this happens not only with CS2, but also with other games

5. After rebooting the computer, I see a lot of "nvlddmkm" errors in the Event Log, which directly indicate the loss of image and a driver failure

6. This is due to Steam update and possibly some conflict with Windows 11 24H2

Initially, I did not understand that this issue was widespread and tried to exclude the problem with my computer: all my games work fine, the temperatures of the GPU/CPU are good, tests in OCCT also passed without any errors, and I was also able to easily reproduce this on another computer in the same game (CS2).

I just hope this issue will be noticed and fixed as soon as possible, because it seems to me that this is a rather critical bug.

[Nikusui 😗]

I have the same issue as you regarding the steam overlay, which happened recently as well.
Mine was after some amount of time of using the steam browser, it would freezes the system.
Sound (from video) would continue to run normally, but none of the keys would work. Ctrl+alt+delete would also fail to work and bring you to the task manager prompt.
I am updated on Nvidia driver version 576.40, and on Win 11.

[Iceira]

Do not be in steam beta as a mistake, and also ask steam support, they have support. also ask game own suppoort if you have only 1 game with this issue.

I and other can only point at reset overlay, or game own overlay, other then that clear cache and flush cmd, rest is in steam hands.

ps.
And you choise not have newest clean installed GPU driver, and you dont explan dual card issue with Main card issue, several post with this.

And you dont mention have turn off web gpu accelration option inside steam.
they are well know issue for many years now..

As i said we here as steam user can only point at old issue, not this that's seen as a new issue, but is it that or old issue you now think is new issue, because you do not cover or checked them in this post.

black screen is not a new issue here. ( depend on how you look at it. )


ps.
And in top of this do not have BIOS and Chipset driver not updated, same goes with windows uodate and all its extra updates. ( we have seen steam fix in windows extra update ) a while back.

[Iceira]

And i have to find the board info at other post.

And no you dont seem to have IGPU at that board.

Have you tried the intel driver agent and see if it need to update its intel drivers.

[Wertysd]

Also facing the same issue, for now I have just disabled in-game overlay to prevent myself from opening it as a force of habit.

Not related to a specific game, as I have experienced the issue with multiple different games.

Also seeing loads of nvlddmkm errors in Event viewer. Ran DDU and installed older version of Nvidia drivers to no avail.

[Iceira]

Originally posted by Wertysd:

Also facing the same issue, for now I have just disabled in-game overlay to prevent myself from opening it as a force of habit.

Not related to a specific game, as I have experienced the issue with multiple different games.

Also seeing loads of nvlddmkm errors in Event viewer. Ran DDU and installed older version of Nvidia drivers to no avail.

Try Nvidia live chat, witha nvidia helper , what have you to lose for not trying. and if nvidia is part of the issue.

[󠁳⁧⁧vip4r]

I think the problem is not caused by Nvidia or the processor but by Steam itself. I am using an AMD processor and I have the same problem. I am using the latest version of Nvidia, but the person in the title stated that the error occurs when using the old version. Disabling Overlay seems to be the only solution for now.

Also, I deleted the graphics driver with DDU and reinstalled the latest version but the problem persists.

[Iceira]

Yes but above user mention alot of "nvlddmkm errors in Event viewer. " and that might be other issue or part of the problem.

Also turn it off have other issue, with steam service, some games use that to achivements, so NO not possible for many to turn it off.

And we are back at contact steam support. or try steam bete if they made a hot fix , and flip out of beta if they have not. ( you are only in steam beta if you have a problem they have fixed as hot fix. ) imo.

We have seen stay in beta later can give other issue.

[󠁳⁧⁧vip4r]

Originally posted by Iceira:

Yes but above user mention alot of "nvlddmkm errors in Event viewer. " and that might be other issue or part of the problem.

Also turn it off have other issue, with steam service, some games use that to achivements, so NO not possible for many to turn it off.

And we are back at contact steam support. or try steam bete if they made a hot fix , and flip out of beta if they have not. ( you are only in steam beta if you have a problem they have fixed as hot fix. ) imo.

We have seen stay in beta later can give other issue.

My steam client is in the normal version, not beta, and the problem persists.
I have the error "nvlddmkm" in event viewer.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/730/discussions/0/594023708174121698/ And in this thread I can see people who have had this problem for the last week.

[Tea Garden]

Originally posted by 󠁳⁧⁧vip4r:

I think the problem is not caused by Nvidia or the processor but by Steam itself. I am using an AMD processor and I have the same problem. I am using the latest version of Nvidia, but the person in the title stated that the error occurs when using the old version. Disabling Overlay seems to be the only solution for now.

Also, I deleted the graphics driver with DDU and reinstalled the latest version but the problem persists.

Hello, there is no need to do DDU, this issue is not related to drivers as I said in the post, because people with different driver versions also talked about it. This issue is related to the latest Steam update on May 20, after that something broke. My thoughts are that something conflicts with Windows 11, because in the latest stable versions of Windows 11 there are some problems with MPO (MultiPlane Overlay). I have already reported this issue to Steam support.

We need to wait for a fix from Valve.

[Tea Garden]

Originally posted by Wertysd:

Also facing the same issue, for now I have just disabled in-game overlay to prevent myself from opening it as a force of habit.

Not related to a specific game, as I have experienced the issue with multiple different games.

Also seeing loads of nvlddmkm errors in Event viewer. Ran DDU and installed older version of Nvidia drivers to no avail.

Yes, disabling the overlay is a necessary thing now, I also sometimes open it out of habit

And yes, you don't need to do DDU, as I explained in the answer above.

[SweatyFeetGirl]

I crashed with multiple nvidia driver versions and every time i check the memory dump its the same error. Its nvidia related specifically something with the steam overlay. I only got a generic response from the steam support about contacting microsoft..

[Syle]

Same issue today

[Kharnath]

having the same issues.

[citizen.empire]

I just had a similar issue. Posted shortly before seeing your post. Nothing I change in my AMD or NVidia settings will change that either, saw some folks recommend that. Was playing just fine for about an hour in before it started. Now it will only open games in a window on the corner of the screen. Can't even change the window size.

[Iceira]

Try past nvidia driver, only thing i can say here there was a nvidia driver update yesterday for me. maybe its that driver you have issue with.

As fare as i know steam has not had a update or maintaence day in tuesday as the always do

but gl with it. if that even a help here.