Drive-watchdog.exe process comes from a harmful application that can correctly be identified as a coin miner trojan. That malware type utilizes your hardware to mine cryptocurrencies, generally – Monero or DarkCoin1. It makes your system almost nonfunctional as a result of high CPU use.
What is Drive-watchdog.exe process?
Drive-watchdog.exe is a malicious process created by coin miner virus
Drive-watchdog.exe – Very high CPU/GPU usage
Besides CPU utilization, some of the coin miners also use GPU power for their operations. In that situation, you will probably struggle also to see the mouse arrow moving – GPU is usually utilized on 100%. It is not as important as processor for system work, so Drive-watchdog.exe coin miner viruses don’t waste time on trifles and utilize it all. It often can cause unhappy results.
Shortly about cryptocurrency mining
List of the typical coin miner symptoms
How dangerous is the Drive-watchdog.exe miner?
Coin miners does not deal damage to your files. However, they make a lot of unpleasant things with the whole system
Initially, Drive-watchdog.exe virus makes your computer overloaded. It is not able to run your applications now, as all CPU power is consumed by a virus. That malware does not care for your necessities, all it focuses on is making money on you. Even if you are patient, and you waited until web browser is open, you will likely experience extremely sluggish performance. Pages will open up for years, any sort of logins will take about a minute – just a headache for a person who works online.
Drive-watchdog.exe Technical Summary.
| File Name | Drive-watchdog.exe |
| Type | Trojan Coin Miner |
| Detection Name | Trojan:Win32/CoinMiner |
| Distribution Method | Software bundling, Intrusive advertisement, redirects to shady sites etc. |
| Similar behavior | Hidfind.exe, Msisa.exe, 7z2107.exe |
| Removal | Download and install GridinSoft Anti-Malware for automatic Drive-watchdog.exe removal. |
“Visible” damage is not a solitary negative activity coin miners do to your personal computer. Drive-watchdog.exe coin miner also deals damage to your OS. To execute all malicious operations properly, it ruins the security components of your system. You will likely see your Microsoft Defender disabled – malware stops it to avoid detection. If you check the HOSTS file, you will likely see a number of new notes – they are added by this trojan miner to connect your computer to a malicious cryptomining network. All these adjustments are about to be gone back to the initial state in the process of PC recovery.
Hardware effects of coin miner activity
Besides making your computer slow, running at peak level for long times can trigger damage to your device as well as raise electricity costs. PC elements are created to easily get along with high load, but they can do so only when they are in a good shape.
Small and covered processor cooling system is not very easy to crack. Meanwhile, GPUs have big and easy-to-access fans, which can be easily broke if affected while working, for example, by the user much earlier before the virus injection. Malfunctioning cooling system, together with the extremely high load caused by Drive-watchdog.exe virus can easily lead to graphic card failure3. Video cards are also tend to have very fast wearing when utilized for cryptocurrency mining. It is surely an undesirable case when your GPU’s performance plunges 20-30% just after 1-2 weeks of being exploited in such a way.
How did I get Drive-watchdog.exe coin miner virus?
Coin miners are spread through different ways, but their main sources are malicious banners and programs from dubious sources
The example of malicious banners you can see in the Internet
Another way you could get this thing on your PC is by downloading it from the unreliable web page as a part of a program. Users that spread hacked versions of well-known programs (which do not require the license key) have small chances to make money. Thus, there is a very big temptation to add in malware to the final package of the hacked application and receive a coin for every installation. Prior to criticizing these guys for hacking and also malware spreading, ask yourself – is it okay to avoid paying for the program in such a way? It is much cheaper to pay $20-$30 one time than to pay a much bigger sum for antivirus software as well as new parts for your computer.
How to remove the Drive-watchdog.exe miner from my PC?
The best way to get rid of this coin miner virus is to use anti-malware software
Booting the PC into Safe Mode with Networking
Press the Start button, then choose Power, and click on Reboot while holding the Shift key on the keyboard.
Windows will reboot into recovery mode. In that mode, choose Troubleshoot→ Startup Settings→ Safe Mode with Networking. Press the corresponding button on your keyboard to choose that option.
When your computer is in Safe Mode, all third-party apps, just like the majority of non-crucial operating system components, are not launched with the system start. That allows you to clean the PC without dealing with high CPU usage of the coin miner.
References
- Read about why Monero and DarkCoin are so popular amongst cybercriminals.
- About unwanted effects for GPUs in the process of cryptomining.
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