Hello @eth481642, this reads more like a desktop environment or video driver issue than an issue with Steam. It may be worthwhile to test other desktop environments and also mention the issue to your video driver vendor if it hasn't been already.
After latest Nvidia driver update (470.74), the "fix" via running some "special" games do not work anymore. So it became clear, that it is Nvidia driver problem
For those, who ended up in this thread with same problem - I found solution to fix this:
Open NVIDIA X Server Settings, go to "X Server Display Configuration", click "Advanced" and turn on "Force Composition Pipeline", then click "Apply"
Note that this changes wont be persistent and after reboot Composition Pipelining will be disabled. To make it persistent you can save X configuration file generated by Nvidia settings to xorg.conf but I do not recommend this way, because it can make you some problems in future after you update Nvidia drivers or kernel. Instead of this I prefer to enable Composition Pipelining dynamically
Create a file in /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/99-force-composition-pipeline with following content:
#!/bin/sh
nvidia-settings --assign CurrentMetaMode="$(nvidia-settings -q CurrentMetaMode -t | tr '\n' ' ' | sed -e 's/.*:: \(.*\)/\1\n/g' -e 's/}/, ForceCompositionPipeline=On}/g')" > /dev/null
Make this file executable via chmod +x and reboot.
I did some tests and noticed that there is no need in ForceFullCompositionPipeline, ForceCompositionPipeline should be enough. Also I found that there is no performance difference between ForceCompositionPipeline, ForceFullCompositionPipeline and no pipelining at all(tested by game benchmarks in Rise of the Tomb Raider(Native) and Batman: Arkham Knight(Proton))
I had the exact problem has you on arch. Reproducing the black screen after just turning off/on the monitor. Enabled ForceCompositionPipeline but now the game is stuck on the initial loading bar :cry:
I had the exact problem has you on arch. Reproducing the black screen after just turning off/on the monitor. Enabled ForceCompositionPipeline but now the game is stuck on the initial loading bar
When I selled my monitor with G-SYNC and moved to monitor without G-SYNC the problem went away. So, just want to make it clear - do you have G-SYNC enabled monitor?
I had the exact problem has you on arch. Reproducing the black screen after just turning off/on the monitor. Enabled ForceCompositionPipeline but now the game is stuck on the initial loading bar
When I selled my monitor with G-SYNC and moved to monitor without G-SYNC the problem went away. So, just want to make it clear - do you have G-SYNC enabled monitor?
Yes, it is gsync enabled. I may try to disable it at the monitor level 🤷
I tried to disabled gsync in nvidia-settings without success though.
I had the exact problem has you on arch. Reproducing the black screen after just turning off/on the monitor. Enabled ForceCompositionPipeline but now the game is stuck on the initial loading bar
When I selled my monitor with G-SYNC and moved to monitor without G-SYNC the problem went away. So, just want to make it clear - do you have G-SYNC enabled monitor?
You were right. Disabling gsync directly on the monitor instead of in the nvidia-settings did the trick :1st_place_medal:
I cannot thank you enough @eth481642 !
SOLVED!
I was going round and round with different solutions, tweaking proton compatibility layers, switching sound output, and looking for Nvidia setting solutions . None of them worked.
I'm running on CachyOS, which is based on Arch but I'm guessing solution will be simliar for others.
I went into the system's general display settings and changed the option for
Legacy applications (X11) to
Scaled by the system
instead of
Apply Scaling themselves
Nothing extracted yet.
Your system information
Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:
Before writing this issue I googled a lot, and I found many other people with same issue, but no one found the reason and solution for this. I also found that this issue exists for a long time (>1year)
When I lock my graphical session by pressing Win+L or Ctrl+Alt+L and then unlock it after some time, steam games launches with black screen and sound. When I try to switch between apps via Alt+Tab, I can see the game window and the game itself in it, but when I release Alt+Tab on game window, screen goes black again. I found 3 solutions for this:
I tried to run steam via terminal to watch log output and compare the problem instance(when games runs with black screen) and normal instance. I compared 2 log files with diff and there are no differencies except lines with dates and PIDs
Steps for reproducing this issue: