Hardware ban: how to tell your PC got banned, not your account
A hardware ban blocks your PC, not your account. How to recognise one, what the anti-cheat remembers in Rust, Arena Breakout and Tarkov, and what helps.
- A hardware (HWID) ban blocks the computer. The anti-cheat stores the serial numbers of your drives, motherboard and network card, and every new account on that PC follows the old one into a ban.
- The main sign: a fresh account gets banned within minutes or hours without doing anything wrong.
- A new Steam account, another IP, a VPN or reinstalling the game won’t help. The hardware serials stay the same.
- People get past it with a spoofer that masks those serials, or by replacing parts. A spoofer will not bring back the account that was banned.
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You got banned, made a new account, loaded into the game — and twenty minutes later you’re banned again. New email, new nickname, you didn’t turn anything on. That’s a hardware ban: the game is no longer blocking an account, it’s blocking the computer.
How a hardware ban differs from a regular one
A regular ban sits on the account. A new account on the same PC plays normally until it breaks the rules itself.
A hardware ban (also called an HWID ban, from Hardware ID) sits on a set of your computer’s serial numbers. The anti-cheat stores them on its server once and checks them every time you log in. A match means a ban, no matter which account you use.
- Your computer SSD S/N 2K19…A7BOARD UUID 4C4C…11MAC 9C:6B…:F2
- Anti-cheat checks the numbersagainst its ban list
- Ban a new accountcan’t play either
| Account ban | Hardware ban | |
|---|---|---|
| What gets blocked | The account | The computer |
| New account on this PC | Works | Gets banned |
| Old account on another PC | Banned | Banned |
| What helps | A new account | Masking the serials or replacing parts |
The two usually come together: the account is banned for cheating and the hardware along with it, so the player can’t come back five minutes later with a fresh email.
What exactly the anti-cheat remembers
Every part of a computer has its own number, and any program can read it — an anti-cheat with a kernel driver all the more so. The anti-cheat collects several of these at once, which is why replacing a single part often isn’t enough.
| Part | What is read | Does a Windows reinstall change it? |
|---|---|---|
| SSD and HDD | Serial number, S.M.A.R.T. data | No |
| Motherboard | SMBIOS serials, system UUID | No |
| Network card | MAC address | No |
| Graphics card | UUID on NVIDIA cards | No |
| Monitor | Serial from EDID | No |
| RAM | Module serials | No |
| TPM | Key burned in at the factory | No |
| Windows | MachineGuid, install ID | Yes |
That’s why reinstalling the system doesn’t help: it only changes what Windows wrote itself. Everything else lives in the hardware, and after a clean install the anti-cheat reads the same numbers again.
How to tell it’s a hardware ban
The ban notice almost never says “you were banned by hardware”. You have to tell from how it behaves.
- A new account gets banned for no reason. You logged in, ran around for ten minutes or only reached the lobby — banned. That’s the main sign.
- The reason and length match the old ban. If the notice on the new account has the same wording and the same end date, the system recognised the computer.
- Test on another PC. Log in with the new account on a friend’s computer. It works there but is banned on yours — the problem is your hardware.
- An error before you even reach a match. Some games won’t let you onto a server at all and throw an anti-cheat error on connect, on any account.
If a new account played for several days before getting banned, that’s more likely a regular ban for something it did itself.
How it works in different games
The mechanism is similar everywhere; the anti-cheat and the ban length differ.
Arena Breakout: Infinite. It runs ACE (Anti-Cheat Expert) by Tencent. Confirmed cheating gets both the account and the device banned: the notice shows a lift date ten years out. New accounts on a banned PC often get banned in their very first raid. ACE also leaves traces in Windows itself, so spoofers for ABI usually require a system reinstall.
Rust. Easy Anti-Cheat bans the account: the game shows “EAC: Banned” when you connect to a server, and a game ban appears on your Steam profile. Repeat offences also bring a hardware ban, and then every account on that computer goes down too.
Escape from Tarkov. Cheating gets the account banned permanently, and BattlEye remembers the hardware. New accounts on the same PC often don’t last long.
Valorant. Vanguard starts together with the computer and reads the TPM. That makes this the nastiest hardware ban: besides the serials, you need a TPM spoof.
What won’t help
These are the first things people try, and they don’t work:
- A new account, email or phone number. The ban isn’t tied to them.
- A VPN or a new IP. The anti-cheat looks at your computer’s parts, not your network address.
- Reinstalling the game or cleaning folders by hand. Hardware numbers aren’t stored there.
- Reinstalling Windows without a spoofer. Only the MachineGuid changes; the other serials stay.
- Replacing a single part. The anti-cheat checks several numbers at once, and the remaining ones are usually enough to recognise the PC.
What actually helps
There are three options, and only one of them is free.
An appeal. If you didn’t use cheats and you’re sure the ban is a mistake, write to the game’s official support. If a cheat was involved, the appeal will almost certainly be rejected.
Replacing hardware. It works, but it’s expensive: at the very least the drive and the motherboard, and in Valorant also the CPU if the TPM is built into it.
A spoofer. It replaces the serial numbers the anti-cheat reads, and the game sees a different computer. There are temporary ones (until a reboot) and permanent ones. How they differ and which one your game needs is covered in the article about spoofers.
How not to get hardware-banned again
Once you’re past the ban, it’s easiest to get caught again on small things:
- Don’t log into the old account on this PC. One login and the new serials get linked to the old ban.
- The cheat first, then the spoofer. If you change the serials earlier, the cheat key can bind to the spoofed hardware and stop working.
- Run a temporary spoofer before every session. After a reboot the computer reports its real numbers again.
- Turn off your VPN while spoofing. Some spoofers can’t handle virtual network adapters.
- Check the system before the first launch. Defender, Secure Boot and Core Isolation get in the way of spoofers and cheats alike. How to turn them off: Secure Boot and Core Isolation.
FAQ
It depends on the game. Arena Breakout: Infinite bans confirmed cheating for 10 years, and in Rust a hardware ban is usually permanent. The account ban and the hardware ban don’t always have the same length.
No. A reinstall only changes software identifiers (PC name, install GUID). The serial numbers of the drive, motherboard and RAM live in the hardware, and the anti-cheat reads them again.
If the ban was a mistake, appeal through the game’s official support. If a cheat was used, appeals are almost always rejected.
No. A spoofer hides the old hardware from the anti-cheat so you can play on a new account. The ban on the game’s servers stays.
Steam bans accounts (VAC and game bans). Hardware is banned by each game’s anti-cheat: EAC, BattlEye, ACE, Vanguard. A hardware ban doesn’t show on your Steam profile.
