I’ve been playing Fallout for a while(2, 3, nv, 4, 76…), and I had my doubts about fallout 76 when it first came out (didn’t stop me from buying the collector edition and caught in that canvas(plastic) bag fiasco), but overall I liked it.
After a year-long-ish hiatus, I tried to get back into it, as there’s a couple new questlines, some much-needed QOL update(FINALLY a bigger stash), and just because I want to continue trying to build the CAMP. So I reinstalled it, entered game, and…5 minutes in I got a message “Disconnected due to modified game files.”. Log back in, 5 minutes, kicked back out.
Hmm. That’s weird. Let’s try scan/repair the files. Success. Log in, entered game, 5 minutes, “Disconnected due to modified game files”. O…K…? Let’s try reinstall. Same result.
Now that I’m really curious. Searching shows mostly what I did, a reddit post didn’t turn up much, a discord question brought out some helpful folks, but still didn’t help. WTH Bethesda? you invented new ways to mess up a almost-decade-old engine?
Then… pages down the search result there’s this reddit post:
“Windows Test Mode”? This sounds…familiar… I looked at my desktop corner… Hmm. “Windows Test”. And I even remember how I got there – I had to install some USB drivers to work with a ESP8266 dev board for fun, and the driver isn’t WHQL-signed. I didn’t expect a driver for some aliexpress board to go through all the WHQL certification(they won’t), and lived with that “Windows Test” stuff just fine since almost no program cared about it…until now.
Fire up Powershell (Be sure to run as administrator), and run the command:
bcdedit -set TESTSIGNING OFF
then reboot. The mysterious “Windows Test” disappeared from desktop corner, and Fallout 76 is happy again.
This really needs to be in a FAQ somewhere on Bethesda support site…I think there’s enough tinkerers who’s also Fallout fans…