Despite being one of the most popular competitive FPS games in the world, installing and playing Valorant for the first time is not as simple as you’d hope, with many players being hit with error code VAN9001 and a message mentioning Secure Boot and/or TPM 2.0.
If you’ve been unfortunate enough to come a cropper with this error, don’t worry. We’re going to show you how to fix it and explain what it is.
Unfortunately, this will require some adjustments in your PC’s BIOS, so be careful, as there are settings that can cause issues if changed incorrectly.
It’s worth mentioning that depending on your motherboard, this process might not be exactly the same, as each motherboard manufacturer will configure their BIOS setup screens differently. However, the broad strokes are the same. With that in mind, follow these instructions to get Valorant working properly.
Valorant should no longer throw an error on startup now, as the Vanguard anti-cheat system now has what it needs to operate properly.
For a more visual reference, here’s how we enabled TPM on one of our PCs. The following steps were performed on a GIGABYTE X670E AORUS Master Motherboard.
Our BIOS opened up in “EZ Mode,” so we had to press F2 to change it to “Advanced Mode.”
1. Once there, we clicked on the “Settings” tab to access TPM settings.
2. In the “Settings” tab, we scrolled down to “Miscellaneous” and hit enter.
3. Here, we had to enable two different settings. The first of which was the “Trusted Platform Module” selector, which we changed to “Auto”
4. Then, we entered the “Trusted Computing” tab, right below the TPM selector.
5. Finally, we enabled “Security Device Support” and pressed F10 to save and exit.
6. Once the computer booted back up into Windows, we ran tpm.msc to verify that our changes were successful:
Some additional details about TPM 2.0, Safe Boot, and the VAN9001/VAN9003 error code can be found directly from Riot and Windows themselves.
TPM stands for Trusted Platform Chip, and it allows for programs and applications to be "trusted" by windows to a higher extent. It might not be enabled for your motherboard out of the box. Normally this doesn't cause issues, but when it comes to Riot Vanguard, it does.
If you PC has a motherboard that's relatively modern, you probably do. Here's how to check:
One of two things will happen now: You’ll either see an error message stating that “Compatible TPM could not be found” or a TPM Control panel will open up. If the latter is true for you, make sure of the following:
If it says "Compatible TPM cannot be found", you are out of luck, as the TPM is a physical thing on the motherboard, so you can't download it. Now might be a time to consider upgrading your motherboard.