Steam Overlay causes entire PC to freeze and black screen when used while gaming New update as of August 18th
Nvidia employees received the necessary dump files. They stated that, in their words: "It appears this is caused from the Steam Webhelper running in realtime thread priority."

It's my understanding that they are currently working on identifying the specific causes and will be looking to resolve it. In the meantime, they have advised using a workaround by either disabling the Steam overlay or disabling hardware acceleration in Steam.



Workaround provided by Valve
Launch Steam with the -disable-overlay-gpu-pri option. If you do not know how to launch Steam with options, then visit this guide

UPD: this workaround works not for everyone, so it is better to disable GPU acceleration for steam web views




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://gtm.steamproxy.vip/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.


Update
For those who installed the update KB5058499 for Windows 11 24H2, please let me know if this issue is fixed after the update

Several people confirmed that the KB5058499 update did not solve this issue, also using Windows 10 instead of Windows 11 24H2 also does not solve it. Therefore, this is the fault of the Steam Client, Valve needs to notice all of us.



Update 2:
I received a new response from Steam support, where they told me that they forwarded my report to the developers and that we all should follow the updates. However, for some reason they will reproduce this issue in CS2, probably because I said that I initially noticed this issue in this game, I don't know but ok.



Brief info for those who are new here so that people don't have to reread a lot of pages

It is the Steam Overlay that crashes the driver, which is why the screen freezes and then there is a black screen without losing the monitor signal, this is what "nvlddmkm" errors means in this case.
If it was the driver's fault, people with a driver that came out in 2022 wouldn't write that they have the same issue. If it was on the Windows side, people wouldn't be writing that they have Windows 10 and the same issue started happening at the same time as users of the latest Windows 11 24H2 (And I want to remind that Windows 10 hasn't received any updates other than security updates for a long time). Therefore, this is the fault of the Steam client update for May 20 (or most likely the previous update before May 20).
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This issue is also before that time, ppl with dual GPU card notice odd behavier with it.
Black screen and things like that, and yes all point at GPU driver or MS even, but you know how it is, a gamer really don't care who did what they just follow the fix my issue here and now.

This is why turn off IGPU was part of the issue and other post you seem to fix steam longtime to start a game up, then later out of the blue, came overlay issue that trigger this even more, with new steam user this has just increased over the timeline, and when you have a 3 way split in steam, MS and GPU card support, someone down the line here made a tiny mistake and overtime getting worse.

I will remind you blizzard client also has GPU accelration so do MS edge browser and we don't seem to complain over them games and client or browser even.

even in old days pp with intel onboard and main card issue , ppl might not know this today but other old pcx user have seen all this before, and many forget old PC build ways was standard and might still be the PC core old almost outdated knowledge today, but it still stand if you kno3w any old educdated PC user, and why we still use reference from how they did it.

if you notice ppl wiht 1 GPU only have lesser issue, with all of this, atleast they dodge that dual card issue, but that dont explan why they also can have the No accelration issue, so no its not that simple as you thnnk, and it dont help if you have other overlay interference issue in top of this.

i and other have seen this in old steam, post , they all make a mistake here and think discord ovetrlay was there first.

as fare as i know steam over lay was first, if you disregards MS extra tool box for its office serie's as external app. ( other apps has done same have things run in back ground as intergrated extension, also why we have this debat now. ) but backthen we did nnot see interference issue as todays PC , but the how they did it, was down the line here.

Same as MS applet that later gave other issue and got removed by MS even, who to blain for task run at PC when Main app is not running is the issue.

gl with find past pc user that have all the old ways and have the skill to ID ( interference issue )
steam has a section in own help guide about it.
Interference issue and steam overlay issue. ( i and other dont need to explan anything about it )
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/1F39-DCB4-FF28-5748
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/3978-072C-18DF-FBF9


Investigate Anti-Virus Software
AV software hooks very deep into user systems and can affect disk and network operations which will cause issues with Steam. Some games also use copy protection technology that can appear as malicious software to an AV scanner, resulting in potential false-positive alerts.

You'll want to work with a tech support specialist to ensure that your AV software is not interfering with Steam. You may even need to temporarily disable it for testing purposes. It may also be necessary to add exceptions for Steam in your AV configuration (for example, excluding Steam Library folders from live monitoring services).

Investigate Other Programs Interfering
Any software that modifies or monitors system, disk or network activity can cause issues with the Overlay's functionality. These programs and services can run in the background and are typically associated with software like Anti-Virus, ad-blockers, web-optimizers, firewalls, system cleaners, recording software, proxies, performance boosters etc.


To many steam user have security app that somehow effect steam, as i and other already explan in steam past post.

ps.
Turn off overlay is simple not a option for many steam user, it will effect steam services.

and we still see past win7/8 windows user in top of this, you cant use some steam services with old outdated system.
Last edited by Iceira; 9 hours ago
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