[Critical Freezing Issue When Re-launching VALORANT – MSI Motherboard Users Please Read]

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ehswydy1127a02a2

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May 14, 2025
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Hi everyone,
I'm a VALORANT player from South Korea, and I’m writing this because I believe this freezing issue needs to be taken seriously and discussed more broadly.

Problem Summary​

Whenever I re-launch VALORANT, my entire system freezes within 1 to 3 minutes. The only way to recover is by either force restarting or shutting down the power completely.
  • The strange part is:
    • If I launch and play the game normally, there are no issues.
    • But if I close the game and launch it again, it causes a total system freeze.
    • Even after playing normally, when I later try to shut down Windows, it freezes on “Shutting down” or “Restarting” screens, requiring another force shutdown.

Solutions I’ve Tried (None Worked)​

I have tried every known fix shared across forums between 2022 and 2025, including:
  1. Reinstalling Realtek LAN drivers
  2. Disabling hardware GPU acceleration
  3. Turning off Fast Startup in Windows
  4. Clean boot and restart
  5. Reinstalling GPU drivers via DDU
  6. Fresh install of Windows 11 24H2
  7. Installing Windows 10
  8. Installing Windows 11 23H2
  9. BIOS reset

Nothing has worked. The freezing continues under the same conditions.


What’s Really Interesting​


After some investigation, I found that every user experiencing the same issue (including me) has one thing in common:

They all use MSI motherboards.

Here are some reported cases I’ve collected:


What Could Be Causing This?​


It's hard to say for sure if the issue lies with Windows, VALORANT itself, or Vanguard’s kernel-level behavior.
However, given that this issue seems to be reproducible across different Windows versions and setups,
and that all reports involve MSI motherboards,
it could potentially be a compatibility issue between MSI BIOS and VALORANT/Vanguard.



If you're an MSI motherboard user experiencing similar symptoms, please share your case.
Let’s work together to raise visibility and get Riot to investigate this properly.


Thanks for reading.
 
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I mean if it only happens with Valorant, you know who is the one to blame.
As far as I know, the only thing that is requires by Valorant from BIOS is secure boot and fTPM.
It looks like some sort of driver conflict though, do you see anything under event viewer?
 
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I play a lot of games, both single and multi player, but never had issues on any of my MSI based systems or even laptops. But I also don't play Valorant precisely because how their anticheat sits in the kernel.
 
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ehswydy1127a02a2 said:
Hi everyone,
I'm a VALORANT player from South Korea, and I’m writing this because I believe this freezing issue needs to be taken seriously and discussed more broadly.

Problem Summary​

Whenever I re-launch VALORANT, my entire system freezes within 1 to 3 minutes. The only way to recover is by either force restarting or shutting down the power completely.
  • The strange part is:
    • If I launch and play the game normally, there are no issues.
    • But if I close the game and launch it again, it causes a total system freeze.
    • Even after playing normally, when I later try to shut down Windows, it freezes on “Shutting down” or “Restarting” screens, requiring another force shutdown.

Solutions I’ve Tried (None Worked)​

I have tried every known fix shared across forums between 2022 and 2025, including:
  1. Reinstalling Realtek LAN drivers
  2. Disabling hardware GPU acceleration
  3. Turning off Fast Startup in Windows
  4. Clean boot and restart
  5. Reinstalling GPU drivers via DDU
  6. Fresh install of Windows 11 24H2
  7. Installing Windows 10
  8. Installing Windows 11 23H2
  9. BIOS reset

Nothing has worked. The freezing continues under the same conditions.


What’s Really Interesting​


After some investigation, I found that every user experiencing the same issue (including me) has one thing in common:

They all use MSI motherboards.

Here are some reported cases I’ve collected:


What Could Be Causing This?​


It's hard to say for sure if the issue lies with Windows, VALORANT itself, or Vanguard’s kernel-level behavior.
However, given that this issue seems to be reproducible across different Windows versions and setups,
and that all reports involve MSI motherboards,
it could potentially be a compatibility issue between MSI BIOS and VALORANT/Vanguard.



If you're an MSI motherboard user experiencing similar symptoms, please share your case.
Let’s work together to raise visibility and get Riot to investigate this properly.


Thanks for reading.
Click to expand...
I can confirm that MSI Center and Counterstrike VAC conflict. You are correct, this behavior is reproducible, I've tested it several times.

It is not just an MSI issue. It took a lot of searching to find any information about this, but on other forums I have read that there is a known issue with Valorant, Counterstrike VAC, and similar anti-cheat software mistaking many low-level programs that read system data for cheats.

I guess VAC disables MSI Center Service. MSI Center will not start after getting VAC kick while playing Counterstrike. MSI Center works after setting the MSI_Center_Service to manual and starting it.
 
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I FOUND THE PROBLEM!!!
The APU has to be active! Although I don't use the APU and have a dedicated 3070ti, if it's turned off, I have Freeze and it's active, Valorant runs without any problems!! I've tested it several times to be sure!
 
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I got the same problem with my Msi X870E carbon wifi using with 9800x3D.

After the testing I try in these days, I confirm that I need to turn on the integrated graphics option to run Valorant normally.

If I turn off the integrated graphics option, the whole PC will freeze while I playing Valorant for a few minutes.

Seems like Msi Bios have some conflict with the Valorant or Vanguard. Hope there have a fix patch for the Bios.
 
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