Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 beta locks out PC players without TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot

PC players who want to jump into the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 beta will need two security features switched on — TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot — or they will be blocked from every online mode. That is a tougher line than Activision has drawn before. In previous Call of Duty titles, players missing those requirements were only locked out of certain modes like Ranked Play and shuffled into separate matchmaking pools Eurogamer.

For the beta, the restriction is total: no compliance, no online play.

Activision's Ricochet anti-cheat team laid out the requirements in a support guide on 17 August 2026, alongside a video walkthrough showing how to enable TPM in the UEFI/BIOS on both AMD and Intel systems. The publisher also released a free tool called the Call of Duty Secure Attestation Wizard — a small downloadable app that scans a PC's BIOS settings and reports back either "System compliant" or "System not compliant," with details on what needs fixing Eurogamer.

For anyone unfamiliar with the terms, here is the plain version. Secure Boot is a low-level feature that lets anti-cheat software load during the PC's startup sequence, preventing cheats from initialising before the game even runs. TPM 2.0 — short for Trusted Platform Module — adds a hardware-based layer on top, detecting whether the boot process has been tampered with. Together they verify the system's integrity from power-on to gameplay, working alongside Ricochet, Activision's anti-cheat system.

Activision states the requirements apply not just to the Modern Warfare 4 beta but also to Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 and Call of Duty: Warzone. The supported operating systems are Windows 10 (version 22H2 or later) and Windows 11 (any version). TPM 2.0 is optional on Windows 10 but required for Windows 11, so anyone already on the newer OS may simply need to confirm it is enabled.

Enabling the features means diving into the BIOS — the firmware screen that appears before Windows loads. Activision's guide walks users through setting the boot mode to UEFI (not Legacy), confirming the disk uses a GPT partition style (not the older MBR format), and switching Secure Boot to Enabled. If the Secure Boot option appears greyed out, the fix is to ensure UEFI mode is selected, save, reboot, and re-enter the BIOS. TPM may appear under different names depending on the processor: Intel PTT for Intel CPUs, AMD CPU fTPM for AMD, or as a discrete chip called a dTPM.

This is not unique to Call of Duty. Secure Boot and TPM 2.0 have become standard demands in competitive PC gaming, with Valorant already requiring them and Battlefield 6 enforcing Secure Boot now, with TPM 2.0 expected to follow Eurogamer.

For PC players, the practical takeaway is simple: run the wizard, check the BIOS, and sort it out before the beta begins. Console players are unaffected — these requirements apply only to the PC version.