How to Fix League of Legends Won’t Open – 2024 Tips

League of Legends users are supposed to immerse themselves into the fascinating gameplay. However, they can’t even load into the game, which is pretty vexing. If you’re also having the issue of League of Legends not opening or responding, don’t fret! In this guide, we’ll walk you through several methods to troubleshoot it.

Try these fixes for the League of Legends won’t open issue

Not all methods are required in order to solve your problems. Simply work your way down the list until you find the one that does the trick.

1. Make sure your PC can run LOL
2. Allow your game through Windows Firewall
3. Close conflicting/ non-essential apps
4. Run your game as an administrator
5. Install all Windows updates
6. Update your graphics driver
7. Run LOL with the dedicated graphics card and in high-performance mode
8. Reinstall League of Legends

1. Make sure your PC can run LOL

Before getting started with your troubleshooting, you need to verify if your PC can handle the game. Simply check the minimum and recommended system requirements below.

If your machine is just at or below the game’s minimum requirements, the game may not launch and you should upgrade your PC for gaming.

But if you’ve confirmed that your PC is perfectly capable of running League of Legends, the next thing you need to do is check the server status before diving into any advanced tweaks. If the game server is not under maintenance or there are no issues on their server side, try the fixes below.

2. Allow your game through Windows Firewall

Windows Firewall is a built-in tool that blocks any suspicious and harmful connection and program to your computer. However, sometimes it may block your game, even though it doesn’t necessarily do harm to your computer. To check if your game has access to your connection, follow the steps below.

1. In the Search box, type windows firewall. Then click Windows Defender Firewall from the list of results.
   
   
2. From the left panel, click Allow an app or feature through Windows Defender Firewall.
   
   
3. Under the Allowed apps and features section, scroll down and find League of Legends. If it’s not on the list, click Change settings > Allow another app….
   
   
4. Click Browse….
   
   
   
   Then go to the game’s installation folder to manually add your game to the list.
   
   If you’re not sure where your game’s installation folder is located, right-click on your game’s shortcut and select Open file location.
   
   
5. Once it’s added to the list, check the boxes under Domain, Private, Public. Then click OK to apply the changes.
   
   

If you have any antivirus software installed on your system, make sure you turn it off before opening League of Legends.

Then you can try to launch League of Legends and see how things go.

3. Close conflicting/ non-essential apps

There are some situations when two programs cannot run on the same computer at the same time. Not often, but possible, the software conflict can be the reason why you can’t launch a program as expected. Some gamers did find that the Razer Synapse is more likely to be in conflict with a number of big releases. Therefore, if you have it installed in your computer, stop it from running in the background. In addition, it’s suggested that you close the non-essential apps before you launch League of Legends, which can prevent those apps from significantly overloading your system.

Now follow the guide in detail below to do this.

1. On your keyboard, press the Windows logo key + R simultaneously to open the Run box.
2. Type taskmgr and press Enter.
3. Under the Processes tab, right-click the programs that are most likely to cause interference, such as Razer Synapse. Then select End task.
   
   

When you’re done, open League of Legends and see if it’s loading normally. If it still fails to launch, move on to the next fix.

4. Run your game as an administrator

Sometimes when a program lacks administrative privileges, it’ll fail to launch properly. To check if that’s your case, you can try running it as an administrator.

1. Right-click on your game’s shortcut and select Properties.
   
   
2. Select the Properties tab. Then check the box next to Run this program as an administrator. Then click Apply > OK to save the changes.
   
   

Now open League of Legends and it should be granted with administrator rights. If it’s still not responding, don’t fret! You can try other methods below.

5. Install all Windows updates

If you can’t remember when was the last time you updated your operating system, definitely do this right now. Windows updates usually come with bug fixes and bring new features. When you can’t launch a certain program, the compatibility issue might be the culprit. And downloading the Windows updates would possibly fix it. To do this, follow the instructions below.

1. In the Search box, type check for updates. Then click Check for updates from the list of results.
   
   
2. From here, you should see the Check for updates button. Make sure to click on it.
   
   

If it shows that Updates are available, select Install now and patiently wait for the updates to be installed on your system. Then reboot your computer and try to start League of Legends. If it still fails to load properly, try the next fix below.

6. Update your graphics driver

Your graphics card is one of the core components of your computer. And your graphics driver is an essential piece of software that makes sure you can get the top performance from your graphics card. If it’s outdated or corrupt, however, myriad issues would occur. To rule out the cause of the problem you’re facing, you should try to update your graphics driver.

To do this, you can head to the manufacturer’s driver download page of your graphics card, find the latest driver that corresponds to your computer’s operating system. Then follow the on-screen guide to download and install it.

If this manual process seems too troublesome for you, you can use a driver updater tool like Driver Easy to handle things automatically for you. It’s a useful tool that diagnoses driver issues and lets you update outdated drivers all at once or one at a time to get your PC running smoother.

After your drivers are fully updated, restart your computer for the changes to take full effect. Then launch your game. If your problem persists, proceed to the next fix.

7. Run LOL with the dedicated graphics card and in high-performance mode

When League of Legends refuses to launch on your computer, you may also want to check the Windows graphics settings to make sure that they’re set correctly. This includes running League of Legends with the dedicated graphics card, and in the High Performance mode. To do so:

1. On your keyboard, press the Windows key and the I key at the same time to open Settings.
2. Select Gaming, and make sure that the toggle for Game Mode is set to On. Then click the Graphics tab.
   
3. Select League of Legends or Steam from the list of apps, and select High performance.
   
4. Then click Change default graphics settings.
   
5. Make sure that the toggles for Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling and Optimizations for windowed games are both set to On.
   

Try to launch LOL again to see if it launches well. If the problem remains, please move on to the next fix, below.

8. Reinstall League of Legends

If all else fails, there might be something critical with your game’s installation. And you should perform a reinstallation.

1. On your keyboard, press the Windows logo + R keys simultaneously to open the Run box.
2. Type appwiz.cpl and press Enter.
   
   
3. Locate League of Legends. Right-click it and click Uninstall.
   
   
4. After the game is uninstalled successfully, navigate to the installation folder and delete all files.
5. Now follow the on-screen prompts to reinstall League of Legends.

That’s it – a full guide to fix the League of Legends not opening issue. Let us know in the comment section below if you have any questions. Also we welcome new ideas if you do find any.

• League of Legends