@Nalchic Although the EA Anticheat doesn't run until you launch the game you did give me an idea of something else to look at.
So, I changed the boot configuration to reduce the total CPUs available from 16 down to 4.
After a restart I was running with only 25% of my CPU available but I didn't get the error and the game could launch.
It also worked with 50% of my CPU (8 processors) available at boot.
I'm definitely thinking I have a CPU issue now as problems with Valorant also go away with fewer CPUs.
The kicker was at 14 CPUs, the system does an immediate BSOD reporting a CRYPTO LIBRARY INTERNAL ERROR. Recovery mode and bcdedit is required to make the system usable after this.
So Valorant works fine until it goes above 12 CPUs and FC24 is fine up to 8. With 10 and 12 FC 24 fails to load but no Hardware error reported by the Anticheat.
Been in contact with HP again and waiting to hear back (discovered this just after they closed their help lines on Friday) but I think there could be light at the end of the tunnel.
Thanks for the inspiration.
Considering you managed to BSOD the operating system without any anticheat and a completely valid configuration, I think this is not an anticheat issue. It probably is CPU.
Regarding your initial post about the error message: Stating falsehoods in an error message is worse than being vague, and hardware errors can stem from really any component. So with such an error message, EA is probably playing it safe. They most likely suspect CPU issues are prevalent considering overclocking is explicitly called out as a possible cause, but you'd be more mad if it directly said it was a CPU problem and it turned out to be actually a RAM issue.
