Boot - Does Valorant Need Secure

Yes, requires Secure Boot to be enabled, but primarily for players on Windows 11 . If you are running Windows 11 and Secure Boot is disabled, the game's anti-cheat, Vanguard , will block the game from launching and display errors such as VAN9001 or VAN9003 . Why is Secure Boot Required?

Cheaters often use sophisticated methods to bypass anti-cheat, such as "bootkits." These are viruses that load before Windows even starts. If a cheat loads before the operating system, it can hide from or manipulate Vanguard. does valorant need secure boot

Secure Boot will not work if your drive is formatted in legacy "CSM" or "Legacy" mode. You must be in UEFI mode. Yes, requires Secure Boot to be enabled, but

After an hour of YouTube tutorials and three blue screens, Alex got it working. Secure Boot: Enabled. They held their breath and launched Valorant. You must be in UEFI mode

Then they noticed something else. A log from two weeks ago, the last time they’d tried to launch the game: Vanguard.sys blocked. Secure Boot validation failed. Below it, a separate entry: Driver integrity violation detected. Unknown module attempted to load into kernel memory.

Valorant uses a kernel-level anti-cheat system called Vanguard. This system runs at the deepest level of your operating system (Ring 0) to detect cheats before they can load.