As of League of Legends update 14.9, players are drowning in a sea of tech problems; up to and including bricking people’s PCs. While Riot insists that these issues aren’t related to Vanguard, fans beg to differ.
According to accounts on social media, it’s even affecting players who use a variety of Virtual Machines to play PC games – including the popular Nvidia NOW. If you’re seeing errors like “Vanguard error 1067” or “Windows cannot access the specific device.”, just know that you aren’t alone.
While there are any number of reasons a computer program could crash, or a security program doesn’t work, in this case it comes down to likely two causes: compatibility and Windows settings.
One of the most prevalent causes of League of Legends bricking PCs is likely compatibility with Nvidia/GeForce NOW. Unfortunately, Vanguard doesn’t support Virtual Machines of any kind.
If you’re using any sort of program like that to remotely connect and play LoL, you need to cease and desist. While Nvidia support did state that they’re working with Riot to find a solution, there isn’t one at the time of writing.
However, this isn’t the only reason to worry if you’re a LoL player and you are getting errors when trying to load in. If you’re playing on Windows 11, you are running a serious risk of having your PC brick when loading League of Legends.
In order for Vanguard to function properly, according to Dinodogstudio on X, your machine needs to have both UEFI and TPM 2.0 enabled in your BIOS settings. These are both settings that are required to run Windows 11, though there have been workarounds found that allow people to update to the newest OS without them.
If you try to run League of Legends once the client and everything has updated, you’re not going to be able to load in. You will have no choice but to rollback to Windows 10 instead.
Other users on social media claim that Riot’s new system is trying to “tamper with unrelated files”, or even asking for you to “delete System32” – one of the most important files for running Windows.
From casual players, to Nick “LS” De Cesare, players around the world are claiming that trying to run League of Legends is bricking their PCs. At this time, Riot continues to suggest that it’s nothing on Vanguard’s end.
Riot Games has not made a response at this time, but some members of their tech staff have replied in the Patch 14.9 Bug Megathread on Reddit to offer solutions, or to say that the issues wouldn’t be related to Vanguard at all.
