Valorant Unable to Start Correctly: How to Fix

Valorant unable to start correctly fix
Valorant unable to start correctly fix / Photo by Riot Games

Reports of Valorant being unable to start correctly have flooded in from the community in the past 24 hours. The issue is believed to coincide with Tuesday's Patch 2.05 update. Players across the globe are reporting that they are greeted with an error window when booting up Valorant.

After some troubleshooting from the community, many players found the issue to be related to their antivirus software. The update might have made Valorant clients less likely to cooperate with other software on players' computers. Many players reported that the game booted up normally once they disabled their antivirus software.

If you are having this issue when opening your Valorant client, try disabling your antivirus software and see if it solves the problem. If Valorant will still not start, you might have to uninstall the software completely. This appears to be a temporary issue that Riot Games is already aware of.

Valorant Unable to Start Correctly: How to Fix

In a response to a Reddit post about Valorant being unable to start, user ArmiesofZNight, who is a developer at Riot Games, offered an explanation. He stated that one of the client updates in the new patch was "not playing nicely" with certain software on players' devices. He assured that the team is investigating and will release a fix as soon as they can.

Valorant 0xc0000005 Explanation

The error message that appears during this issue reads "the application was was unable to start correctly (0xc0000005)". The 0xc0000005 refers to the error code used to determine the exact nature of the client's abnormal behavior. This error code has appeared before in Valorant and is typically associated with the client's inability to launch.

Currently, the short-term solution for this issue is to disable or uninstall the antivirus software on your device. For the long-term, the only option is to wait for a fix from the developers. Disabling antivirus software can leave players' devices at risk but thankfully Riot is already working on a better, permanent solution.

Valorant Patch 2.05 is now live with bug fixes and several added penalties for toxic behavior.