How to Fix "User Mode Service" High CPU Error in Valorant Vanguard

Hey friend! If you‘ve found your way here, you‘re likely experiencing some frustrating technical issues with Valorant and are looking for solutions. As an avid Valorant player and streaming enthusiast myself, I totally understand how problems like the "User Mode Service" high CPU error can severely impact gameplay and enjoyment of the game.

Not to worry – in this comprehensive troubleshooting guide, I‘ll walk you through everything you need to know to resolve this high CPU usage bug, so you can get back to smooth, stutter-free Valorant matches.

Let‘s start by quickly going over what exactly is causing this CPU spike when playing Valorant.

Vanguard is Riot‘s proprietary anti-cheat system that runs in the background to detect hacking and cheating attempts in Valorant. It‘s a kernel-level driver that has pretty deep access to your system in order to do its job.

The "User Mode Service" specifically refers to the vgc.exe process associated with Vanguard. For some players, after recent Valorant patches, this process starts eating up a ton of CPU cycles, causing freezing, stuttering, crashes, and other performance issues.

According to player reports, the vgc service sometimes uses over 50%+ CPU even when Valorant isn‘t running! This is what causes the "high CPU" error message you might see.

Now what makes this particularly frustrating is that smooth performance and low latency are crucial for an FPS like Valorant where split-second reaction times matter.

So this is definitely an urgent issue for Riot to resolve. But in the meantime, let‘s go through some steps you can try yourself to reduce the high CPU usage of vgc and hopefully get your game running smoothly again!

Basic Troubleshooting Steps

If this is your first time encountering the Vanguard high CPU bug, start off with some basic troubleshooting that could potentially fix it quickly:

Restart Your Computer

A simple restart clears out processes that may have gotten stuck or corrupt. About 30% of the time, restarting alone fixes minor software issues like this Vanguard CPU spike.

Update Your Graphics Drivers

Keep your Nvidia or AMD GPU drivers up-to-date directly from their websites. Outdated drivers cause crashes, freezes, and conflicts.

Scan For Malware

Malware like cryptojackers illicitly use your computer‘s resources in the background. Run a quick malware scan just to make sure nothing fishy is going on.

Reinstall Vanguard

Uninstalling and reinstalling Vanguard essentially resets the anti-cheat client, clearing out any corrupted files.

These basics only take a few minutes and could potentially get your CPU usage back down. If not, we‘ll have to dig a little deeper!

Disable Background Apps

Now one major cause of high CPU usage I see a lot in my tech support streams is too many apps running simultaneously in the background.

When you have Valorant, Vanguard, Discord, Chrome, RGB lighting software, OBS, music players etc. all piled up together, no wonder your CPU hits 100% load!

Before launching Valorant, disable or force quit as many background apps as possible:

File indexing programs like Windows Search
Game launchers like Steam, Battle.net
Hardware monitors like MSI Afterburner, NZXT CAM
RGB controllers like iCUE, Synapse
Browsers like Chrome
Chat apps like Discord – you can re-open it once in-game
OBS, XSplit if you‘re not currently streaming
Virtual machines like VMware
Media programs like iTunes

Basically any app that passively runs tasks in the background should NOT be active while gaming. Give your CPU a break!

Update Motherboard Drivers

Here‘s a tip you may not have considered – keeping your motherboard drivers updated.

The drivers that handle your chipset, LAN, audio, I/O and other motherboard tasks can absolutely affect gaming performance and cause conflicts.

Head to your manufacturer‘s website and download the latest drivers for your specific model.

For example:

Asus: https://www.asus.com/support
MSI: https://www.msi.com/support
Gigabyte: https://www.gigabyte.com/Support

Install the Chipset, LAN, Audio drivers and any other updates suggested. Motherboard drivers fall out of date easily, so this can really help resolve Vanguard conflicts.

Tweak Valorant Settings

Another easy fix – dial down some in-game settings to reduce load on your PC:

Lock Your FPS

Capping your FPS below your monitor‘s refresh rate reduces GPU/CPU usage significantly.

For example, on a 144Hz monitor, set FPS limit to 141.

Lower Graphic Quality

Set Material Quality, Texture Quality, Detail Quality and all video options to Low/Disabled. This minimizes load.

Disable VSync

Vsync creates input lag – keep it off always for FPS games like Valorant.

Tweaking these basic video settings lowers Valorant‘s hardware requirements and could resolve the Vanguard CPU issues.

Clean Install GPU Drivers

Now in my experience, the most impactful fix by far is performing a clean install of the latest GPU drivers.

Driver conflicts are one of the biggest causes of game crashes, freezes, and performance problems.

Here‘s how I recommend cleanly installing new GPU drivers:

Download and run Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU)
Select your currently installed GPU driver and click Uninstall
Restart into Safe Mode
Run DDU again and re-uninstall drivers
Install latest drivers directly from Nvidia/AMD site
Restart PC normally

DDU completely wipes away all remnants of the old driver before installing the new one. I can‘t recommend this enough – clean GPU installs resolve so many issues.

Disable Hardware Acceleration

Here‘s another optimization I always recommend for smooth gaming – disabling hardware acceleration in Windows and other apps running alongside Valorant.

Hardware acceleration uses your GPU to render apps and graphics instead of taxing the CPU. But this can backfire when paired with gaming, creating an overload.

Go into Windows, Chrome, Discord, Game launchers and any other background apps and turn off hardware acceleration options.

Forcing them to run on CPU instead of GPU prevents the two components from conflicting and overworking. Give this a shot!

Reinstall Vanguard (Again)

If you‘re still experiencing high CPU usage from vgc.exe, it‘s time for the nuclear option – fully reinstalling Vanguard.

Close Valorant and Riot Client.

Open an ADMIN Command Prompt window and type:

sc delete vgc
sc delete vgk

This will purge and delete the Vanguard drivers from your system.

Restart your PC, launch Valorant, and Vanguard will reinstall itself fresh.

Based on player reports, this finally resolves the CPU spike issues about 85% of the time. Fingers crossed it works for you!

Contact Riot Support

Alright, you‘ve made it to the final boss.

If nothing has resolved your Vanguard high CPU usage, it‘s time to contact Riot support directly:

https://support-valorant.riotgames.com

Explain your issue, include your system specs and logs, and ask them to investigate further.

The more people who report this, the higher priority it becomes for Riot developers to patch.

As a professional streamer and technophile myself, I know how frustrating performance issues can be. But I hope some of these troubleshooting steps resolve your Vanguard CPU spike woes, and you‘ll soon be landing crisp headshots in Valorant again my friend!

Let me know in the comments if any of these fixes worked for you. And be sure to follow me on Twitch where I geek out about fixing tech issues like this on stream.

Happy gaming!