NVIDIA GeForce Experience overlay preventing your display from sleeping? I fixed it!

[nuzayets]

Like in the title. NVIDIA's had this bug with GeForce Experience for 3 or more years now, it happens if you have a joystick plugged in. People have basically had to choose to either turn the overlay off, or unplug their joysticks every time. So I got annoyed and decided to fix it myself.

 

The fix is pretty simple to apply:

1. Disable the GeForce Experience overlay while we apply the patch.
   
2. Open PowerShell as an Administrator (you need to be able to write to GFE's directory):
   - Hit Winkey+R, type powershell and press CTRL+SHIFT+Enter.
   - OR hit the Start menu, begin typing powershell, right click on Windows PowerShell and click Run as administrator.
3. Paste the following code:

   ## Make sure NVIDIA GeForce Experience overlay is disabled before running this script.
   ## PowerShell should be started as Administrator.
   ## This was tested against GeForce Experience:
   ##  - 3.20.5.70
   ##  - 3.20.5.83
   
   $path = Split-Path ((Get-ItemProperty -Path Registry::HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\GeForceExperience\Shell\Open\Command).'(default)' -replace '"',"")
   $file = [System.IO.File]::ReadAllBytes("$path\libcef.dll")
   $offset = 0x61e0ae8
   if($file[$offset] -eq 4 -and $file[$offset+2] -eq 5 -and $file[$offset+4] -eq 8) {
   	Stop-Process -Name "NVIDIA GeForce Experience" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
   	Stop-Process -Name "NVIDIA Share" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
   	[System.IO.File]::WriteAllBytes("$path\libcef.dll.bak", $file)
   	$file[$offset] = 6    # Replace usage 0x04 (Joystick) with keyboard
   	$file[$offset+2] = 6  # Replace usage 0x05 (Gamepad) with keyboard
   	$file[$offset+4] = 6  # Replace usage 0x08 (Multi-axis Controller) with keyboard
   	[System.IO.File]::WriteAllBytes("$path\libcef.dll", $file)
   } else {
   	Write-Output "Your libcef.dll doesn't seem to match the version this file was tested against."
   }
   

    

4. Re-enable the GeForce Experience overlay.

If you want to know why this particular byte in this particular file, I've written up how I debugged the issue here: https://details-of-note.blogspot.com/2020/12/nvidia-3-year-old-bug.html

Until NVIDIA issues a patch, I will try to keep the patching script up to date here: https://github.com/nuzayets/rawinput-debug

 

I hope this will be of interest to the community here ... If NVIDIA sees it, maybe they'll actually fix it and I won't have to keep updating the patch.

[WkdPaul]

* thread moved to the Guides and Tutorials section *