If you just got hit with VAN 152 in League of Legends or Valorant, you are in one of two situations. Either Vanguard is failing to load for a benign reason (driver conflict, TPM disabled, corrupted install) — in which case Riot's own troubleshooting steps will fix it in 10 minutes — or your motherboard is on Vanguard's HWID ban list. The second case is the one nobody tells you about, and it is the one most people googling this error are actually in.
This post explains how to tell which situation you are in, what the real fixes look like, and why none of the "reinstall Vanguard" guides on Reddit will save you if you are hardware-banned.
What VAN 152 actually means
VAN 152 is Vanguard's way of saying: "I tried to start, and the system refused me." It is not the same as VAN 0 (general initialization failure) or VAN 9001 (driver issue). VAN 152 specifically appears when Vanguard's pre-launch check finds something it does not like about the machine — and "the machine" in this context means the hardware fingerprint, not your account.
Vanguard's fingerprint includes:
- Motherboard serial number
- CPU ID
- TPM 2.0 manufacturer ID
- Disk serial numbers (HDDs and SSDs)
- Network MAC addresses
When Vanguard's backend has any of these on a ban list and they match the machine trying to start the service, the service refuses to initialize. That refusal surfaces to you as VAN 152.
The benign causes (try these first)
About 30% of the people seeing VAN 152 are not actually banned — they have a configuration issue Vanguard cannot work around. Walk through these before assuming anything worse:
- Make sure TPM 2.0 is enabled in BIOS. Vanguard requires it as of the 2024 update. If you upgraded to Windows 11 without enabling TPM (some people did with TPM bypass tricks), Vanguard cannot get the chip ID and falls back to rejection.
- Disable conflicting kernel drivers. Common culprits: old anti-cheat drivers (BattlEye, EAC, FaceIt) that did not uninstall cleanly, certain VPN drivers, virtual machine drivers, and some manufacturer "gaming" utilities.
- Reinstall Vanguard cleanly. Uninstall via Add/Remove Programs (look for "Riot Vanguard"), reboot, then let the Riot Client reinstall it on next launch. Do not skip the reboot.
- Run Windows Update. Vanguard requires recent Windows builds. Anything older than Windows 10 22H2 or any non-current Windows 11 build can throw VAN 152 silently.
If one of these is your problem, you will know within an hour. If none of them work — or if VAN 152 comes back the moment Vanguard initializes — you are probably in case two.
The case nobody talks about: HWID ban
If the benign fixes do not work, the most likely explanation is that your motherboard, TPM, or CPU is on Vanguard's ban list. This is what Riot calls an HWID ban, and it is the reason most VAN 152 threads on Reddit end with "tried everything, nothing works."
A few facts about HWID bans that are worth understanding before you keep googling:
- They are intentional and permanent. Riot's official position is that HWID bans do not expire. There is no waiting period, no appeal that meaningfully works, no "lay low for 6 months" loophole.
- They affect every Riot title. A Valorant HWID ban will block League logins too, because Vanguard is the same anti-cheat across both. A LoL Vanguard ban will block Valorant.
- They survive Windows reinstalls. The fingerprint is hardware-level, not OS-level. Wiping the disk, reinstalling Windows, even buying a new copy of the game — none of that touches the motherboard serial or TPM ID.
- They survive most spoofers. Spoofers built before 2024 do not touch TPM 2.0, which means Vanguard still sees the original TPM manufacturer ID and matches it to the ban list. This is why a lot of people buy a "spoofer" and still see VAN 152.
If you are in this situation, the official fixes do not apply. You need a different approach.
The two paths that actually work
There are exactly two strategies that work in 2026 if Vanguard has fingerprinted your hardware and you want to play League again.
Path 1: Spoof the hardware Vanguard sees
A hardware spoofer changes the values that the OS reports for your motherboard, TPM 2.0, CPU, disks, and MAC addresses. Vanguard's pre-launch check then sees a "new" machine that does not match the ban list, so VAN 152 stops appearing.
The catch: most spoofers in 2026 do not spoof TPM 2.0. Spoofers built before Vanguard added TPM checking still flip the motherboard serial and call it a day. Vanguard sees the unchanged TPM, matches it to the ban list, and you still get VAN 152.
For this path to work, the spoofer needs to:
- Spoof TPM 2.0 (not just the motherboard)
- Stay compatible with HVCI and Secure Boot (Windows 11 enables both by default)
- Not require BIOS flashing (which carries brick risk)
- Be reversible (so you can play other titles that require the original IDs)
Our Temp Spoofer fits all four. It is the only spoofer we ship because it is the only one that handles TPM 2.0 correctly in 2026.
Path 2: Stop Vanguard from running at all
The other strategy is more radical: do not try to fool Vanguard, replace it. A Vanguard emulator ships a stub that satisfies the Riot Client's check for Vanguard being installed and active, while the real Vanguard service never actually loads. From your machine's perspective, there is nothing scanning anything. VAN errors are not just rare — they are structurally impossible because Vanguard is not running.
This is what Atlas does for League of Legends. It does not bypass Vanguard, it replaces Vanguard. Once Atlas is active:
- No VAN 152, no VAN 9001, no VAN -69, no VAN 185
- HWID bans become irrelevant (nothing is reading the HWID to check)
- No spoofer required, even on hardware that is permanently banned
- Setup is one executable — no BIOS changes, no USB booting
Atlas is for League specifically. Valorant requires Vanguard to be the real Vanguard for match integrity reasons that emulators cannot satisfy yet (we will write a longer post about this). If you only care about League, Atlas is the cleanest fix in 2026.
If you have one PC, Atlas is the answer. If you have two PCs available, Arch 2PC Bypass gives you a routed bypass — your banned PC connects through a clean second machine that handles the Vanguard surface. It costs more but the architecture is more conservative.
Which path is right for you?
It comes down to what you got hit for and what hardware you have:
| Situation | Recommended path |
|---|---|
| HWID ban on League only, single PC | Atlas (Vanguard emulator) |
| HWID ban on League only, second clean PC available | Arch 2PC Bypass |
| HWID ban on Valorant, want to play League | Atlas |
| HWID ban on Valorant, want to play Valorant | Temp Spoofer (we don't sell a Valorant cheat in 2026) |
| Want to keep using the same chassis across titles | Temp Spoofer |
| Benign VAN 152 (driver/TPM issue) | Run through the 4 fixes above first |
If you are not sure which case you are in, do the benign fixes first. They cost you nothing but time. If the error keeps coming back, the HWID ban explanation is the right one and you can move to Atlas or Temp Spoofer.
Why the official fixes will not save you in the ban case
The Riot Support article on VAN 152 lists about a dozen troubleshooting steps. They are all valid for the benign cases above. None of them address an HWID ban, because Riot does not want to advertise a path back into Vanguard's good graces — that would defeat the point of hardware-banning in the first place.
This is what makes Reddit threads frustrating: the people answering have only ever seen the benign side of the error and confidently tell everyone to "reinstall Vanguard" or "enable TPM." For 70% of the people asking, that fixes it. For the other 30%, none of it works and they get told to "open a Riot ticket" — which they then open, wait 3 weeks, and get a templated rejection.
If you have been through the benign fixes already and VAN 152 is still showing up, stop looking at official forums. The path forward is on the spoofer or bypass side.
Next steps
Two things to do right now:
- Check status before you buy. fpsware.com/status shows which of our products are currently operational. We pause sales the moment Vanguard pushes a problematic update. If Atlas or Temp Spoofer is paused when you read this, wait for it to come back rather than risking a bad-day purchase.
- Read the product page for setup detail. Each product page (e.g. Atlas, Temp Spoofer) has the system requirements, supported regions, and specific cases handled. If your setup is unusual, open a presale ticket in our Discord before buying — we will tell you upfront if your scenario is unsupported.
If you want the wider picture on Vanguard, HWID bans, and what tooling actually works in 2026, the League of Legends page has the deeper breakdown. VAN 152 is one symptom of a larger anti-cheat surface, and the better mental model you have of that surface, the fewer surprises you will hit later.
