Plenty of users have had to deal with this problem and their gaming experience becomes pretty much ruined. The game will disconnect you and possibly ban you from servers because of this error so make sure you follow the article in order to solve the problem as soon as possible.
What Cases the Valve Authentication Error
There are many registered causes for the problem. Sometimes the error is caused by a broken or stopped Steam Client Service and the service either needs to be repaired or restarted. Also, your computer’s old network drivers may be preventing the VAC service from operating normally and you should consider updating them. Other possible culprits include having disabled DEP (Data Execution Prevention) on your computer meaning you might need to enable it. Also, the problem is sometimes caused by Steam Download servers being down so consider switching to a new one.
Solution 1: Repair the Steam Service
Repairing the Steam service should help you solve this problem in the easiest way possible as it did for other users before you. Steam services are the core system behind various things related to Valve and the problem can be solved easily by running a command in Command Prompt which should repair the Steam service.
Solution 2: Enable DEP on Your Computer
If you computer’s settings are not configured properly to run VAC, you may run into issues such as this one more often than you think, especially with Valve games. Unfortunately, the process of setting up your computer for these changes is not so easy and it even involved BIOS troubleshooting which people fear of the most. However, if you follow the steps below, you shouldn’t run into any problems.
In order to solve the problem completely, you will now have to run a simple command in order to solve the problem properly. This command needs to be executed in an administrative Command Prompt window so make sure you are doing this using an account with admin privileges. or Note: If you are unsure whether the command above has worked and you don’t whether the command didn’t work or the method is simply not working for you, there is a way to check the current state of DEP on your computer. Use the following command in Command Prompt: If you see that the result is 3, that means that DEP is enabled for all processes and that is the only number which is acceptable as a result.
Solution 3: Check Your Time and Date Settings
Improper time and date on your computer is not recommended at all and it’s not a thing anyone would do on purpose. However, some users restart BIOS or perform some changes which alter time and date and they forget to set it up properly again. This alone is enough to cause the issue so make sure you check to see if everything is okay.
Alternative: If this doesn’t work out for you or if you are using a version of Windows older than Windows 10, you can also use Control Panel to synchronize with an online time server to always have correct settings.
Solution 4: Delete the Steam Cache and Verify the Integrity of Game Files
This method is quite self-explanatory and it’s one of the most basic fixes you should try out when troubleshooting a Steam game. The first part depends on where you have installed Steam but you should have found out that location by now if you followed the solutions above.
Solution 5: Run Steam as an Administrator and Make Sure the Steam Client Service is Started
This method is a lengthy one and it’s composed from two different parts. However, then these parts are put together, you get a powerful method which can be used to solve this problem immediately. We will set Steam to run with administrator privileges and change the startup of the Steam Client Service to be running at all times.
If this hasn’t resolved the problem, you may have issues with the Steam Client Service which also deals with when VAC should be launched. This can be solved by visiting this process in Services and configuring its startup type.
You may receive the following error message when you click on Start: “Windows could not start the Steam Client Service on Local Computer. Error 1079: The account specified for this service differs from the account specified for other services running in the same process.” If this occurs, follow the instructions below to fix it.
Solution 6: Install the Latest Internet Connection Drivers
Even though most gaming problems are directly tied to the graphics card drivers, this is one of the problems which can be fixed by updating Network drivers on your computer. This can be done using a third-party tool or even better, using the built-in tool called Device Manager.
Solution 7: Change the Steam Server
If there are problems with the Steam servers at the moment, it might be impossible to solve the problem using any other method than by changing the Steam Download Region inside Steam Settings.
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