How to uninstall riot client and stop it from running in windows?

About how to completely uninstall Riot Client. I've dug into this for you, Richard. The Riot Client is notoriously aggressive about keeping itself running in the background, which is why it's blocking your uninstall attempts. The good news is that there are definitely ways to get rid of it completely. The key is that you have to stop all of its hidden processes and services before Windows will let you uninstall it. A standard restart won't work because Riot's anti-cheat, Vanguard, is set to launch automatically with Windows.

You might be wondering why a simple restart doesn't fix this. The main culprit is Riot Vanguard, the kernel-level anti-cheat system.

It's designed to be persistent: Vanguard is programmed to start automatically with Windows, long before you even log in. So a standard restart just loads it right back up.

It operates at a deep level: Because it runs at such a low system level, it can block uninstallers from modifying its files, even when you think the game is closed.

How to completely uninstall Riot Client manually? you often have to go into its own system tray icon and explicitly choose "Exit Vanguard" before you can do anything else. This is why a dedicated tool like Uninstalr is so much easier—it handles this complex sequence for you.