Steam Locks Mouse Input, Creates Audio Issues (Audio Cutting Out)

[BoneRattler]

Your system information

• Steam client version: 1635444231
• Distribution (e.g. Ubuntu): OpenSUSE Tumbleweed 20211025
• Opted into Steam client beta?: Yes
• Have you checked for system updates?: Yes

Additional Info

• Tried on Beta and non Beta Steam Client
• Tried with STEAM_RUNTIME=0
• Tried on NVIDIA Driver versions 470.74 and 495.44

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

After Launching Steam, the mouse will lock up at random and the audio cuts out, coming back in extremely low quality for a while. This will happen repeatedly and at random while the steam client is open. Issues are resolved when the steam client is closed and pulseaudio is reset. Checking journald after this happens only shows that the pulseaudio latency was increased. This also disrupts the microphone. This does not occur when a game is running.

When launched through the terminal, steam outputs the following in the terminal frequently: Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(1635444231)

And also outputs the following occasionally when an instance of the issue occurs: Steam: An X Error occurred X Error of failed request: BadWindow (invalid Window parameter) Major opcode of failed request: 40 (X_TranslateCoords) Resource id in failed request: 0x1206547 Serial number of failed request: 7515 xerror_handler: X failed, continuing

Steps for reproducing this issue:

1. Launch Steam
2. Interact with anything in the store or library for a while
3. Issues above begin to manifest

[kisak-valve]

Hello @BoneRattler, can you keep an eye on disk usage and ram usage the next time you see this issue? In particular, I'm interested if the system is using swap and if there is background work is going on like fossilize_replay processing shaders for Steam's shader pre-caching support.

[BoneRattler]

@kisak-valve I've taken a look at my disk usage as well as ram/swap. The system isn't using swap, ram isn't spiking, and disk usage does increase, but only very slightly. I've tried unchecking "Enable Shader Pre-Caching" just to check if that would make a difference, but the issue still occurs. Perhaps it happens less now but I think it's a placebo as the problem is happening at random.

How could I check if fossilize_replay is operating in the background? I don't see a process by that name running on my machine.

Thanks

[kisak-valve]

Thanks for checking, it would be fairly obvious if Fossilize was running, it is not subtle. If Steam is not actively processing shaders, then there's a good chance that entire sub-component is unrelated. Unfortunately, that also means my initial guess is not relevant.

Maybe try toggling Steam -> Settings -> Interface -> Enable GPU accelerated rendering in web views to the opposite of what it already is currently set and see if that has an effect.

Please copy your system information from Steam (Steam -> Help -> System Information) and put it in a gist, then include a link to the gist in this issue report.

[BoneRattler]

Here is the System Info you requested: https://gist.github.com/BoneRattler/35e58f2619d264a09d806acda33a649b

Yeah, I don't see anything obvious so I guess Fossilize isn't running. Upon further toying with it, I noticed the problem is much worse when downloading a game, the issue will keep happening constantly over the span of minutes during a download. Of course, this means disk usage is high during these periods.

I've tried toggling the option you said to change, and it's lead to a pretty strange result - My mouse no longer seems to lock up, but my audio now cuts out completely. I can fix it by disconnecting my bluetooth headset and reconnecting it. Changing to my speakers allows audio to play with no issue. The audio issue is slightly different now as well. Before, the audio would cut out and come back with very poor quality. Now the audio cuts out, does not come back on my headphones until reconnected, but after reconnecting, audio is fine and latency does not appear to be affected. It is also happening with much less frequency.