Fix Valorant Freezing & Crashing on PC [Quick Solutions]

Having trouble trying to play Valorant? If your Valorant is freezing while playing, you are not alone. Many users have reported that they’re also experiencing random crashes/freezes after updating the game or Windows.

However, you will be surprised at how simple and straightforward it is to solve issues with Valorant once you finish reading this article. In fact, I only had to spend five minutes to remove the crashes in Valorant and start gaming as usual.

Curious yet? Read on, as I have shortlisted everything you need to do to jump back into your gaming session.

Why Does Valorant Keep Freezing?

You may experience Valorant freezing mid-game due to a bug in the software, or there may be compatibility issues between your computer hardware and the game itself. Additionally, other factors, like programs running in the background, can interfere with your ability to play the game smoothly.

There are also a number of potential causes for this issue, such as:

• File Corruption.
• Error in Updates.
• Outdated Drivers.
• Network error.
• System requirement issues.

In some rare cases, a bad or slow Internet speed can cause Valorant to freeze randomly.

One potential solution to this problem is to update your video card and GPU drivers, as outdated drivers may be contributing to the freezing issue. By taking these steps, you can help ensure that your Valorant experience is as enjoyable and smooth as possible.

How to Fix Valorant Freezing and Crashing

You can stop the Valorant freezing issue by making sure your PC GPU meets the minimum requirements. If your Valorant freezes randomly, the next troubleshooting step is to ensure you have all the necessary drivers installed. Killing background processes can also fix the freezing issue.

Third-party anti-virus software can also cause performance issues. Another probable culprit is game overlays such as Discord, Xbox Game Bar, Nvidia Geforce Experience, etc. Even Windows updates can introduce lag/micro stuttering during gameplay.

After a close scrutinization of these reasons, I found and gathered some considerable fixes to stop Valorant from crashing and freezing.

But Before we begin, uninstall Valorant and Riot Vanguard from your computer and install them again. If it doesn’t solve the issue, try these solutions one by one. Don’t skip over any method.

Follow the steps to fix Valorant freezing and crashing problems:

1. Fulfil Minimum System Requirement

I have often noticed users trying to fit their existing hardware and configuration to any game that has just been released and come to market. It does not work that way. In order to run a game smoothly, your PC setup needs to meet the minimum system requirement for that game. The same goes for Riot Games Valorant.

Here’s the minimum & recommended hardware requirement for Valorant:

If your PC config is lower than the minimum specs, you might encounter random performance issues such as Valorant freezing mid-game.

2. Update GPU Driver

An outdated graphics driver is a common cause of this Valorant freezing on startup or crashing issue. So, give it a try if the fixes above do not work for you.

If you have an AMD or Nvidia graphics card, go to their official site, and download & install the latest driver according to your video card model. Updating any driver on Windows 11 is pretty easy. Also, you can use a third-party driver updater like Driver Easy.

However, when found your GPU condition is not good, updating the driver won’t do much. In that case, you should replace the GPU ASAP.

3. Ensure Proper Internet Connection

Valorant is an internet-based battle royal game. So you need a stable internet connection to play the game properly. Also, if your net connection stops suddenly, Valorant will freeze mid-game.

So you must ensure a proper net connection with decent speed to play Valorant without any errors.

4. Set High Priority for Valorant

This will be a suitable option for you if you have a high-end PC to play Valorant. You can run many programs concurrently, but you can set Valorant as a top priority, and it will force the game to head over other running programs.

Here are the steps to set high priority for Valorant:

• Press Esc+Shift+Ctrl to launch the Task Manager.
• Navigate to the Details tab and locate Valorant.
• Right-click on it and hover over Set Priority.
• Set the priority to High.
• Confirm the dialog box by clicking on Change priority.

Now, your PC will allocate more resources to run the game well.

5. Close resource-heavy programs

You need to make sure the game can utilize the most out of your computer’s resources, such as CPU, system RAM, etc. When the game crashes or freezes randomly, there’s a chance your system is running out of available RAM.

To avoid such instances, close all background apps & resource-heavy programs to free up the system memory.

Here’s how to close resource-heavy programs:

• Right-click on the taskbar and select Task Manager.
• Click on Memory to sort the running process by memory usage.
• Find which unnecessary process is consuming too much memory that you can close.
• Select those apps and click on End task.

Now launch Valorant to see if it crashes anymore. If you’re still getting random crashes during gameplay, move on to the next method.

6. Repair Game Files

Sometimes, the Valorant file on your PC gets corrupted. That time the game froze and won’t close, and you hear a buzzing sound from your speakers. That time you should repair the game file.

To repair the Valorant game file:

• Open the Riot game launcher and click on the person-like icon.
• Select Settings from the popup menu.
• Click the Repair option.

After completing the steps, the launcher will remove the corrupted game files from your PC and download fresh files from the game server. So you won’t see any random freeze & crashes while playing Valorant.

7. Disable in-game Overlay

Apps like GeForce Experience or Xbox game bar have in-game overlay options to enhance your gaming experience. You can take screen shorts, record your gameplay, or check your system’s status, like CPU-GPU temp or their usage.

But it puts extra pressure on your PC, making Valorant freeze in-game. So you should disable any in-game overly. Follow these steps to do so:

• Open GeForce Experience on your PC and click the gear icon from the top right corner.
• Go to the General submenu and scroll down.
• Turn off the In-Game Overlay option.

And you are done. Turning off the in-game overlay will release the extra pressure from your PC, and Valorant won’t crash anymore.

8. Lower In-game Graphics Settings

When you run a game at higher graphics settings, it consumes more resources. If you don’t have enough VRAM or run out of system memory, you’re most likely to experience micro-stuttering or freezing during intense gameplay moments or even a game crash.

If you think your GPU is struggling to maintain the performance at the current graphical fidelity, I recommend you turn down the quality to let it perform smoothly.

Here’s how to lower the graphics quality of Valorant:

• Launch Valorant.
• Go to Settings > Video > Graphics Quality.
• Set the following options:
  • Multi-threaded Rendering: On
  • Material Quality: Low
  • Texture Quality: Low
  • Detail Quality: Low
  • UI Quality: Low
  • Vignette: Off
  • VSync: Off
  • Anti-Aliasing: None
  • Anisotropic Filtering: 16x
  • VSync: Off
  • Bloom: Off
  • Distortion: Off
  • Cast Shadow: Off

This way, you can reduce the graphics quality to play Valorant without any random crashes. Here, I would like to suggest you one thing, check the only Fullscreen and Windowed Fullscreen both, and then choose which works better for you.

9. Perform a Clean Boot

Other third-party programs or services can also conflict with game files & might cause random crashes or system stability issues. One definitive way to get rid of this issue is to perform a clean boot.

Here’s how to perform a clean boot on your PC:

• Press Windows Key+R and type msconfig.
• Hit the Enter button on your keyboard.
• Go to the Services tab and tick the box for Hide all Microsoft services.
• Uncheck all the other boxes except the drivers for your computer’s hardware such as Nvidia, AMD, Realtek, Intel, etc.
• Click Apply > OK.
• Close the windows and press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to open Task Manager.
• Go to the Startup tab.
• Select the programs/services that you don’t need to run when your PC boots.
• Click Disable.

Now restart your computer and launch Valorant. If you still face any performance issues during gameplay, move on to the next method.

10. Disable/ Uninstall Anti-Virus

According to some users on Reddit, people have faced crashes or freezing during gameplay when they have anti-virus software installed on their PC.

The majority of the anti-virus programs are very resource heavy and can reduce the frame rates or cause micro-stuttering/freezing. Hence, Valorant freezes but can still hear sound coming from the PC.

If you have Avast, AVG, McAfee, or any other third-party anti-virus installed on your computer, consider disabling or completely uninstalling the program.

11. Update Windows

Lack of updates to your Windows PC may also be the culprit for Valorant gameplay performance issues. If any update to your Windows is available, install it without wasting time. There is a high chance that the Valorant keeps crashing the graphics driver due to outdated Windows.

Also, Valorant usually stuck or freezes on Windows 11 because it isn’t optimized for gaming, and it frequently crashes for no viable reason. So you should keep your Windows 11 updated at all times.

Here are the steps to update the Windows:

Windows 7

• Open the Control Panel.
• Click on Windows Updates.
• Tap on Check for updates to check if anything is available.
• Click on Install or Update to get the job done.

Windows 8 or 10

• Press the Windows+I key from your keyboard.
• Choose Update & Security from the left pane.
• Tap on Check for Updates.

Windows 11

• Press the Win+I key on your keyboard.
• Click on the Windows update from the left panel.
• Select the Check for updates option.

But sometimes, you may face any update-related error with Windows 11 because it’s not stable. That time uses the fixes from our article.

However, in case you’ve been facing random crashes and freezing on Valorant after updating the Windows, you need to roll back to the previous Windows version.

Here’s how to roll back the Windows update:

• Go to Settings > System > Recovery.
• Click on Restart now from the Advanced startup section.
• Select Troubleshoot > Advanced options > Uninstall Updates > Uninstall latest feature update.
• Hit Uninstall feature update.

After finishing the process, your computer will reboot and roll back to the previously installed Windows version. You can also enable go back button on Windows 11 to roll back Windows updates easily.

12. Disable Overclocking

Overclocking or undervolting a CPU/GPU might offer more performance, but they can cause system stability issues as well. Speaking from personal experience, overclocked GPU or undervolted CPU can often crash certain games or even momentarily freeze your PC mid-game.

In case you have tweaked the clock speed or voltage from BIOS or using Intel XTU/ MSI Afterburner, I would highly recommend you to set the clock speed or voltage to their factory default.

After doing so, check if the Valorant freezing in the menu or crashing issues have been resolved.

13. Check for Thermal Throttling Issues

Another probable cause of Valorant randomly crashing or freezing in the menu/ startup/ mid-game is due to thermal throttling. The motherboard can get extremely hot during heavy loads. If your laptop or PC doesn’t have sufficient cooling, the system will start overheating.

As a result, the graphics driver might crash, or your PC can freeze/shut down without any warning. This might be why Valorant keeps freezing and crashing on your PC.

Assuming you haven’t cleaned your PC/laptop for quite some time, disassemble & clean the internals of your device and re-apply thermal paste on the CPU & GPU. You should also remove and re-apply thermal paste on your PC’s motherboard.

Use CPU-Z to keep an eye on the CPU temperature. The CPU temp shouldn’t exceed more than 90 degrees, and the GPU temp shouldn’t exceed 80 degrees.

When that happens, you’ll face sudden frame drops on Valorant. Well, just update the GPU driver, and the FPS will increase.

FAQs

Why is my Valorant client freezing?

Your Valorant game client might be freezing due to insufficient memory or a slower disk drive. Anti-virus software or the Windows Firewall can also conflict and freeze the Valorant client momentarily.

How do you stop a game from freezing in Valorant?

To stop Valorant from freezing mid-game, try closing background apps and freeing up some resources. Also, disable or uninstall 3rd party anti-virus software, update your graphics driver, and lower in-game settings.

Why is Valorant freezing PC on alt-tabbing?

Valorant might freeze when alt-tabbing on your PC due to improper screen mode. If the screen mode in Valorant’s settings is set to Fullscreen, try changing it to Windowed Fullscreen. In case it’s set to Windowed Fullscreen, then switch it to Fullscreen mode.

Final Words

If the methods I demonstrated above are not effective enough to prevent Valorant from freezing or crashing randomly, you may try uninstalling and reinstalling Valorant on your system. Hope this will help you to combat the difficulties.

And if you have any other solution that works for you, please let me know.

Was this article helpful? If yes, you can feel free to share it with your Valorant buddies who are facing it also.