Used and Shared PCs: How Old Traces and Other People's Cheats Are Weighed

A scan describes a PC, not a person. If someone else cheated on the PC before you, or uses it after you, their traces can appear in your scan. This guide explains how AACGUARD limits the damage and what you can do.

What a scan can and cannot know

AACGUARD reads what Windows recorded on the PC: programs that ran, files that exist or were deleted, devices that were connected. It reads every Windows user profile on the PC, so using a separate Windows account does not hide anything, in either direction. What it cannot know is who was sitting at the keyboard. That part is for the player to explain and the admin to judge.

How old traces are weighed

• Age: traces older than 30 days count half, older than 90 days a fifth, older than a year a tenth. A second-hand PC with a cheat that last ran eight months ago adds very little. See Dates and points on every finding.
• Another game: cheats for a different game than the one the scan was for are shown but not counted. A younger sibling's Roblox executor does not count against your CS2 scan.
• Name guesses: files whose names only look like a cheat count very little and can never produce CHEAT DETECTED.

Traces only count fully when they are recent, for the same game, and clearly a cheat. Those are also the traces that matter most for the admin.

Several Steam accounts on one PC

The scan lists the Steam accounts that were used on the PC (never their login names), and our website checks them for VAC, game and AACGUARD bans. AACGUARD staff see the full list; everyone else, including admins with a PIN, only sees how many of the linked accounts are banned. A family PC with a banned account on it is a fact worth explaining, not a ban reason by itself.

If you bought a used PC

1. The cleanest fix is a fresh Windows installation (Settings → System → Recovery → Reset this PC → Remove everything). Old execution records go with it.
2. If you can't reinstall, scan and read the dates. If every finding is from before you owned the PC, keep your receipt or the listing date, and mention it in an appeal.
3. Don't run cleaners first. Wiping traces looks worse than old traces; see Cleaners, cleared logs and clock changes.

If you share the PC

• Ask the others not to install cheats or "free skin changers" on the PC you play on. Many of these are cheats or loaders.
• If a recent finding is someone else's, appeal and explain who uses the PC and for what. Staff look at the dates, the game and the player's history.

LAN cafés and borrowed PCs

Public PCs often have years of other people's software. Run the scan, read the findings and tell the admin it is not your PC before you share the result. An admin who knows the context can read the findings fairly.

For admins

Ask three questions: Is it recent? Is it for this game? Does the player's own history (other scans, Live sessions, behaviour on your server) fit? A single old trace on a used PC is not a cheater; a cheat that ran this week is, whoever claims it was.