How to quickly fix Easy Anti-Cheat’s Error 20006 (and 1072)

Written by Branton

Last updated Jan 7, 2021

In games like Fortnite, Far Cry 5, For Honor, Rust, Scum, and anything else that runs Easy Anti-Cheat, it’s possible to get an Error Code 20006 … StartService failed: 1058 (or alternatively a 1072 error). These errors are extremely annoying and both result in you not being able to play the game you want to.

That is… Not without doing what we’re about to walk you through.

The full error will likely read as “Error Code: 20006 (Cannot create service (StartService failed: 1058)).” Or at the very least something similar to that – the 1058 tells us that EAC has been disabled and needs to be re-enabled. Another possibility is a 1072 error which indicates that EAC has been “flagged for deletion”.

The error you get will dictate the steps you need to follow. Luckily, neither problem is insanely difficult to fix and should only take a few minutes (maybe 10-15) at most.

On this page, you’ll find 3 possible routes to take:

  • If your error was a 1058, start at Option A and if that doesn’t work then Option B definitely will.
  • If your error was a 1072, skip both A and B and jump right to Option C. Once you’re done with C, go back and do Option B.

Note: This will not work if you’ve been banned for cheating. It’s a fix for those who are running into the aforementioned errors with EAC itself.

error code 20006

A.) Fixing Error Code 20006 (Error 1058)

As I mentioned previously, a 1058 error generally tells us that the program has been disabled. Often, you can quickly figure this out by opening Services, right-clicking the program and opening  “Properties”. In the Properties window under “Startup type” you’ll either see “Disabled”, “Automatic”, “Automatic (delayed)”, or “Manual”. For EAC’s sake, we want it to be either “Automatic” or “Automatic (delayed)” if you’re worried about it impacting your startup times.

But, we’ll come back around to that with a proper set of steps further down.

First, make sure that Easy Anti-Cheat is not being blocked or disabled by your anti-virus/firewall. To do that, open your firewall, find the permissions section, find EAC, then make sure it’s not blocked.

Note: If you want to be extra-vigilant, you can set up an exclusion for EAC’s root folder (it should be “C:\Program Files (x86)\EasyAntiCheat\”). To go the extra mile you could also set up exclusions for the EAC folders that any EAC-enabled game will have in its root folder.

Not blocked? Okay, let’s keep going.

The next step is reinstalling/repairing Easy Anti-Cheat. It might be that the current install is corrupted for the one game you want and a quick repair will fix the problem. Wouldn’t that be nice?

You can choose to repair/reinstall EAC from 1 of 2 locations. Either from EasyAntiCheat folder found within your game’s install folder; or from the EasyAntiCheat folder in Program Files (likely C:\Program Files (x86)\EasyAntiCheat). Once you’ve located the folder all you have to do is run the EAC install executable and choose “Repair” in the new window that pops up.

Here’s a good walkthrough on how you can reinstall or repair Easy Anti-Cheat:

In the video, he uses Fortnite as an example, but the same method will work with any of the 70+ games that run EAC.

Hopefully, that works and gets you gaming. If it doesn’t, you might want to try temporarily turning off your antivirus and trying the reinstall again, or reboot your PC; or try both.

If you’re met with yet another error upon trying to reinstall or repair then we have more work to do! On to the next set of steps!

B.) Reinstalling/repairing didn’t work

If none of the above worked, chances are EAC has been disabled by something else. Why or what? I haven’t quite figured that part out yet. But, the simple solution is to turn it back on. However, doing that isn’t easy (or possible) unless you know where to find the right settings.

To turn EAC back on:

  1. Open “Services” – Open the Start menu and type “Services” on Windows 10
  2. Find “EasyAntiCheat” within Services then right-click it and select “Properties”
  3. In the Properties window, find “Startup type” and change it from “Disabled” to “Automatic” (or Automatic (delayed) if you’re worried about bootup performance)
  4. Click “Apply” and close both the Properties and Services windows.
  5. Launch your game

Following those steps should hopefully get you back to gaming within no time. However, if it happened once it will likely happen again the next time you restart your PC. Keep that in mind.e

C.) Fixing Error 1072: Marked for deletion

If you ran into a problem around Step 3 while trying to turn EAC back on and you received an error that said EAC has been “scheduled for deletion”, then you’re going to have to follow one more set of steps…

Alternatively, if you noticed the 1072 error right away, you should start from this point as the previous steps will not work without first doing this.

Luckily, it’s easy to do and should only take a couple of minutes at most.

error 1072 fix

Our next set of steps involves either removing or editing a “DeleteFlag” that you’ll find within the EAC registry folder.

To remove the DeleteFlag:

  1. Open Regedit – Open the Start menu and type “Regedit” on Windows 10
  2. Navigate to “Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\EasyAntiCheat” (if you copy and paste that into regedit, it should bring you to the right spot)
  3. Right click “DeleteFlag” and select “Modify, then change the Value data from “1” to “0”
  4. Restart your PC
  5. Attempt to turn EAC back on again (previous set of steps)
  6. If EAC turns on without a hitch, boot your game!

remove delete flag

With any luck, now you should be able to turn EAC back on and boot your game(s) without an issue. If you’ve tried before restarting your PC and it doesn’t work, try a quick reboot before you panic too much.

Games that run Easy Anti-Cheat

There are a ton of games that run EAC, the last time this guide was updated (September 2nd, 2018) there was a total of 77. If one of your EAC protected games is giving you the 20006 error, then anything else in your library running EAC will as well.

So, if you’re curious how many of your games are EAC protected, here’s the full list of games that currently utilize it. More are added all the time so I’ll try to keep this list as relevant and up to date as possible.

  • 7 Days to Die
  • Absolver
  • Ar:piel
  • Audition TH
  • Battalion 1944
  • Block N Load
  • Cabal Online
  • Combat Arms
  • Combat Arms: Line of Sight
  • Crossout
  • Cuisine Royale
  • Darkfall: Rise of Agon
  • Darwin Project
  • Days of War
  • Dead by Daylight
  • Death Field: The Battle Royale of Disaster
  • Dirty Bomb
  • Dragon Ball Fighter Z
  • Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2
  • Dragonica: Lavalon Awakens
  • Dying Light: Bad Blood
  • Empyrion
  • Far Cry 5
  • Fear the Wolves
  • For Honor
  • Fortnite Battle Royale
  • Fractured Lands
  • Friday the 13th
  • Gigantic
  • Hide & Hold Out
  • Hunt: Showdown
  • Hurtworld
  • Infestation: Survivor Stories
  • Infestation: World
  • Insurgency: Sandstorm
  • Intershelter
  • iRacing
  • Ironsight
  • Lifeless
  • Luna
  • Magicka: Wizard Wars
  • Memories of Mars
  • Miscreated
  • Naruto To Boruto: Shinobi Striker
  • Next Day
  • Offensive Combat: Redux!
  • Onward VR
  • Paladins
  • Post Scriptum
  • Ragnarok
  • Realm Royale
  • Reign of Kings
  • Rend
  • RF Online
  • Rising Storm 2: Vietnam
  • Robocraft
  • Robocraft Royale
  • Rockshot
  • Rust
  • SCUM
  • Sky Noon
  • Smite
  • Squad
  • Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet
  • Tales Runner TH
  • The Culling
  • Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands
  • Total War: Arena
  • War of the Roses
  • War of the Vikings
  • War Rock
  • Warface
  • Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade
  • Warhammer: Vermintide 2
  • Watch Dogs 2
  • Worlds Adrift
  • Yulgang TH

Conclusion

I hope this was able to help you fix Easy Anti-Cheat’s Error Code 20006. Whether you’re playing Fortnite, Squad, or For Honor, this is a seriously annoying problem to run into and can be even more painful to solve… Without the proper help, that is!

If none of the steps listed above worked for you, get in touch with EAC’s support directly and they will be able to help you further.

If you have your own potential fix that you feel could help people out, feel free to post it in the comments!

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Marco Tecno
Marco Tecno
September 30, 2020 11:41 am

Hello, some quick facts:

  • I always launch Fortnite with the .exe called: “FortniteClient-Win64-Shipping_EAC.exe”
  • It used to work fine, but from time to time (and with no apparent reason to me) BE version started instead, thus preventing 2 instances to be launched at the same time
  • I tried ALL the workarounds I found on the internet (yours included) with no luck, but, as I said, usually EAC version worked fine and let me play

Now, since yesterday, this happens:

  • I double click on the above mentioned exe
  • The EAC version appears to start (the fortnite spash screen appears), and in the process details I see both easyanticheat.exe and FortniteClient-Win64-Shipping_EAC.exe running
  • After few seconds, both these processes close (with no apparent reason) and FortniteClient-Win64-Shipping_BE.exe starts instead

I tried:

  • blocking FortniteClient-Win64-Shipping_BE.exe from running with gpedit (no luck since it’s not the user starting it but another app calling it)
  • removing easyanticheat and re-installing it (nothing changed)
  • uninstalling battle-eye (no luck, it asks to re-install it when FortniteClient-Win64-Shipping_BE.exe starts and if I say no nothing will start)
  • deleting the easyanticheat folder from fortnite and having epic to re-download it, then re-installed it (nothing changed)
  • renaming FortniteClient-Win64-Shipping_BE.exe to FortniteClient-Win64-Shipping_EAC.exe (this seemingly works since Fortnite loads but then it won’t let me go online since easyanticheat.exe process didn’t start correctly)
  • uninstalling the full Fortnite and installing it again (re-downloading the whole data) (nothing changed)
  • updating my GPU drivers (nothing changed)
  • closing any anti-virus and anti-malware program (nothing changed)
  • adding the firewall exception for EAC (both easyanticheat.exe and FN executables)

I’m simply beaten. It seems that easyanticheat.exe won’t be able to stay up as a system process.

Any further hint would be more than welcome, at least to understand WHY it suddenly stopped working (ps no update was done to Fortnite between when it used to work, 2 days ago, and yesterday).

bryson raines
bryson raines
December 28, 2018 10:24 am

how to fix error 300004

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