Fix CS:GO Error: Invalid or no Signatures Game Files

In this trouble shooting guide we’ll be covering very common problem that many CS:GO players are experiencing. The error message “some of your game files have been detected to have no signatures or invalid signatures. You will not be allowed to join VAC secure servers” will pop up at the loading screen and the game will no longer allow you to join competitive matches.

What exactly is this issue, well before you go ahead and uninstall and reinstall your game completely there’s a couple of things that you can try.

First of all close the game then locate Counter-Strike Global Offensive in Steam. Right click properties – local files tab – brows local files then in the pop-up window locate csgo.exe. Right click on it properties and in the pop up window head across to the compatibility tab and make sure that “Run this program as an administrator is unchecked and hit OK. Then return to steam and launch the game once again. This time launching the game uses the same loading screen and they were dropped onto the main menu with absolutely nothing wrong with your game. You can go ahead and search for official competitive matches.

If you wish to run the game as admin, for it to work in your PC or give you good FPS etc… How do you do that? Well simply make sure that steam is running as admin and the new game can successfully run as admin as well. Note that if you’re having issues steam running as admin or not as admin may be playing a factor, how exactly do we check that? Well hit Ctrl shift escape to bring up task manager. Then go to the details tab and to the elevated column then simply right click very top - select column and then simply scroll down until you see elevated. Make sure it’s checked then you can go ahead and sort by elevated yes or no and you’ll simply locate steam.exe. 

As you can see elevated no meaning that steam isn’t running in admin mode and your game starts up with a compatibility flag as admin then you may be having issues but simply close out of steam locate steam icon right click more run as admin. This time you can see steam.exe elevated yes so you’re running it in admin mode. If you go ahead and start up the game you’ll see that when it pops up on the list it will be running as admin. Of course if you have that compatibility option. Set as run as administrator as log as steam is also running as admin your game shouldn’t have any issues or load into the main menu then you have it. You should see an error but there is nothing. The game is working perfectly as long as normal in administrator mode.

Now that you’ve gone through that, that is probably be likely cause of your issues if your steam and CS are running at different admin levels. So either run both steam and CS as admin or run neither of them as admin if you’re using something like your Steam account switcher simply head into the settings and check what the setting is at the very top “run steam as admin.” If this is checked make sure your game is running as admin otherwise if it’s unchecked make sure it’s not running as admin. So with all that aside if you’re still having issues then I’d highly recommend locating CS right click properties local files and then “verify integrity of game files.” This will run trough all of your files. Find if something differs from these servers and then you’ll download and replace it. Assuming you’re still having issues after this a complete game installed may be your last option.