Free Valorant HWID Spoofer
Free permanent HWID spoofer for Valorant. Bypass Riot Vanguard hardware bans by rewriting your IDs once, then delete the tool.
Free diagnostic
Is It Really a Valorant HWID Ban?
Player launches the Riot Client, hits Play, and is dropped to a login screen showing "Error code: VAN 152" — Vanguard's hardware-ID ban response, the same error every new Riot account on the machine will hit on every subsequent login.
Can you still log into your game account?
Hardware Coverage
What Valorant Tracks — and What TraceX Rewrites
Valorant's anti-cheat silently reads dozens of hardware identifiers from your PC while it's running — long before you reach a match. Learn how Valorant's anti-cheat works and why it's difficult to bypass without a spoofer. Below is a sample of the identifiers being tracked.
| Hardware Identifier | Valorant Tracks | TraceX Rewrites |
|---|---|---|
| CPU Serial (CPUID) | Yes | Yes |
| Motherboard Serial | Yes | Yes |
| TPM 2.0 Endorsement Key | Yes | Yes |
| GPU Device LUID | Yes | Yes |
| HDD / SSD Serial | Yes | Yes |
| NIC MAC Address | Yes | Yes |
| Windows Machine GUID | Yes | Yes |
Reality Check
Valorant Appeals Almost Never Work
And when they're denied — which is almost always for HWID bans — your hardware stays permanently blacklisted. No second chances.
“Cheating in game by using auto-clickers, aimbots, and other unauthorized hardware or software that gives players an unfair advantage in game will get that player's account permanently banned. Queuing with cheaters will get those players banned for 180 days.”
Riot Games — VALORANT Support, "Addressing Cheating in VALORANT"
Why You Need This
Do You Really Need an HWID Spoofer for Valorant?
You opened the Riot Client to lock Reyna for your usual Bind ranked grind, hit Play, and the screen kicked you back with "Error code: VAN 152" before you ever saw agent select. You uninstalled Valorant, reinstalled, swapped to a brand-new Riot account a friend let you use — same VAN 152 every login. The Riot account isn't the problem. Vanguard's kernel driver loaded vgk.sys the moment your PC booted this morning, fingerprinted the motherboard, TPM, and the rest of your hardware before Windows finished starting, and it's that fingerprint sitting on Riot's banlist — not the name on your Reyna shard.
Reinstalling Valorant from the Riot Client doesn't clear a VAN 152 ban, and neither does a fresh Windows install. Vanguard is unlike most anti-cheats: instead of loading when you launch the game, the kernel driver vgk.sys loads at Windows startup, before the operating system finishes initializing. Riot's anti-cheat lead Paul "Arkem" Chamberlain stated this directly in April 2020: "Vanguard doesn't consider the computer trusted unless the Vanguard driver is loaded at system startup." That's why every fresh Riot account you make on the same rig hits VAN 152 the second it tries to queue Competitive — the kernel handshake fingerprints the machine before the account ever logs into matchmaking.
The fingerprint is anchored to identifiers that don't change with a Windows reinstall: motherboard serial, TPM 2.0 hardware key (mandatory on Windows 11 since September 2021), Secure Boot state, drive serials, MAC addresses. Riot describes TPM 2.0 in its own dev blog as acting as "an extremely non-fungible form of hardware ID." Since December 18, 2025, Vanguard also reads UEFI/BIOS firmware version against a known list of motherboards with the pre-boot IOMMU flaw Riot disclosed alongside CVE-2025-11901, CVE-2025-14302, CVE-2025-14303 and CVE-2025-14304 — the constellation Vanguard reads has only grown wider.
Riot's published HWID ban doctrine is also stricter than most studios': the support page says reinstalling, deleting the responsible account, or swapping accounts won't help, and that anyone else who tries to log into a Riot game on the banned machine — friend, sibling, roommate — gets their own account suspended for "attempting to circumvent the original ban." Competitive players are at extra risk because Riot's ban-wave cadence is high, and because VCT-level cheating cases like Nomsenpai's 2022 Vietnam Open Qualifier ban set a precedent of permanent enforcement.
Verified
Riot Vanguard launched alongside Valorant on April 7, 2020, the first major Western kernel-level anti-cheat to load its driver at Windows boot — before the operating system finishes initializing. Riot's anti-cheat lead Paul "Arkem" Chamberlain described the design verbatim: "Yes we run a driver at system startup… Vanguard doesn't consider the computer trusted unless the Vanguard driver is loaded at system startup (this part is less common for anti-cheat systems)." (Sources: Wikipedia release date; devtrackers.gg RiotArkem April 2020 dev reply.)
Why TraceX
Built for Valorant Players
You shouldn't need to replace your PC to play Valorantagain. That's why TraceX exists.
Run TraceX once before launching Valorant. No daemon, no startup entry, no background service. When you're done, delete the binary.
Your new hardware identifiers don't reset on reboot or reinstall. Vanguard reads them as permanent — exactly like a fresh build.
Every hardware identifier Vanguard reads — CPU, board, drives, GPU, NIC, Machine GUID — rewritten in a single pass.
TraceX runs before Valorant launches — not during. No FPS drops, no stutter, no driver hooks left running while you play.
TraceX updates ahead of Valorant detection cycles. New versions ship before changes land in the game.
When you load Valorant, Vanguard fingerprints what looks like a fresh system. Your real hardware is never exposed.
Setup Guide
How to Bypass a Valorant HWID Ban
Getting around a Valorant HWID ban used to take hours — reinstalling Windows, flashing BIOS, wiping drivers, re-downloading everything, and praying it worked. One wrong step meant starting over and burning another account. With TraceX, a single click does more than all of that combined.
Free download
Get the free Valorant HWID spoofer.
Submit your email and receive your free TraceX HWID Spoofer license in a few minutes. Run it once on your PC to permanently rewrite the identifiers Vanguard fingerprints, then delete the binary and reinstall Valorant.
Detection Analysis
How Valorant Scans Your Hardware
Valorant tracks dozens of unique identifiers from your PC and creates a unique hardware profile. It also leaves behind registry traces even after uninstalling — designed to detect you on return. TraceX takes care of everything.
When you launch Valorant, your real hardware IDs are scanned and matched against ban records. Every new account on a flagged PC is blocked.
Valorant sees a completely new machine with no ban history. New account, clean hardware — access granted.
Ban Reference
Valorant Ban Details
All Vanguard Games
Other Games Using Vanguard
All of these games use Vanguard — the same anti-cheat that banned you in Valorant. One TraceX license covers every one of them.
FAQ
Valorant HWID Ban — Frequently Asked Questions
I got VAN 152 launching Valorant. What is it and is it permanent?
VAN 152 is Riot's hardware-ID ban error code. Per Riot's HWID-ban support article: "Game access will be restricted, and any login attempt will result in a VAN 152 error code." Cheating-detection HWID bans triggered automatically by Vanguard are most often reported as ~120 days by third-party sources; behavioral HWID bans require the player to wait at least one year before submitting a re-evaluation request, per Riot's own policy. Bans for "verifiable threat of harm" are explicitly never lifted.
Why does Vanguard load at Windows boot when EAC and BattlEye only load with the game?
Riot's anti-cheat lead RiotArkem answered this directly in April 2020: "A common way to bypass anti-cheat systems is to load cheats before the anti-cheat system starts and either modify system components to contain the cheat or to have the cheat tamper with the anti-cheat system as it loads. Running the driver at system startup time makes this significantly more difficult." That's also why Vanguard fingerprints the motherboard and TPM at boot — and why every new Riot account on the banned machine hits VAN 152 in the Riot Client before agent select even loads.
I bought a used PC and now I'm getting VAN 152 on a brand-new Riot account. Why?
You inherited the previous owner's HWID ban. Riot's published policy: "When a computer has a hardware ID ban, it means that we've banned the physical components of that computer rather than just banning an account." If another account logs into Riot on the banned machine, "that account will be banned for a set period, as the system assumes that the account is attempting to circumvent the original ban." A brand-new Riot account on the same hardware doesn't help — Vanguard's banlist is keyed to the motherboard/TPM/drive constellation.
Can my friend or family play Valorant on my PC if I'm HWID-banned?
No — their account will get banned if they try. Riot's HWID policy is explicit: "That account will be restricted from accessing Riot Games products on the hardware-banned device. That account will be banned for a set period, as the system assumes that the account is attempting to circumvent the original ban." Riot's own recommendation: "If you suspect a computer has an HWID ban, it's best not to try to log in with any account."
Why does Valorant require TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot on Windows 11?
Riot started enforcing this in September 2021, the moment Windows 11 launched. Per Riot's restrictions page: "If we find PCs that are too cheat-capable (e.g., because of outdated Windows or specific configurations that are conducive to allow cheating), Vanguard will restrict that PC's access to Riot games." TPM 2.0 supplies a hardware-anchored identity Vanguard can fingerprint that survives a Windows reinstall; Secure Boot prevents unsigned cheat drivers from loading before Vanguard does. The errors when either is disabled on Windows 11 are VAN9001, VAN9003, or VAN9090.
Will reinstalling Windows or Valorant clear my VAN 152?
No. Riot's published policy verbatim: "Reinstalling a game or deleting the responsible account won't remove an HWID ban." Vanguard's hardware fingerprint reads identifiers that live below the operating system — motherboard serial, TPM 2.0 endorsement key, drive serials, MAC addresses, and (since December 2025) UEFI/BIOS firmware version. None of those are touched by a Windows reinstall or a Valorant reinstall via the Riot Client.
Can I use a VPN to bypass a Valorant HWID ban?
No — VAN 152 is hardware-level, not IP-level. Reinstalling Valorant, removing Riot Client files, or deleting an account does not remove an HWID ban. A VPN changes only your IP address; Vanguard's banlist is keyed to your motherboard, TPM, drive, and (on Windows 11) Secure Boot identifiers. Riot also flags VPN/proxy use as suspicious in some cases.
I got a VAN: Restriction warning after the December 2025 motherboard update. Am I banned for cheating?
Not necessarily. Riot's December 18, 2025 announcement explains: "Getting one of these warnings doesn't necessarily mean we suspect you of cheating — it means that your current system configuration is too similar to cheaters who get around security features in order to become undetectable to Vanguard." The fix is a motherboard BIOS firmware update from your manufacturer (Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, Asrock advisories — CVE-2025-11901, CVE-2025-14302, CVE-2025-14303, CVE-2025-14304). VAN: Restriction is separate from VAN 152 — the latter is a confirmed HWID ban for cheating that no BIOS update will fix.
Has anyone successfully appealed a Valorant HWID ban?
Confirmed VAN 152 cases almost never get reversed via support ticket; Riot publicly states hardware bans aim to "prevent the use of that device for accessing the service — in this case, Riot's games — regardless of the account being used." The narrow exception Riot acknowledges is buyers of used PCs that were previously banned: that scenario is one of the few categories Riot will reportedly evaluate via Player Support, with proof of recent purchase.
Why does Vanguard run when Valorant is closed?
It always has, by design. The Vanguard kernel driver loads at Windows boot to make tampering with the anti-cheat before launch significantly harder. Outside of Valorant sessions, Vanguard is not actively scanning gameplay or sending data — Riot's own framing: "It's literally just sitting there, so that it can attest to the fact that nothing's happened between Windows loading and the game starting." You can right-click the system-tray icon and exit Vanguard, but you'll need to reboot to play Valorant again.