Essential.exe executable file belongs to a malicious application that can accurately be identified as a coin miner virus. That malware form utilizes your PC components to mine cryptocurrencies, generally – Monero or DarkCoin1. It makes your personal computer pretty much nonfunctional because of high CPU use.
What is Essential.exe process?
Essential.exe is a malicious process created by coin miner virus
As I have specified before, Essential.exe is a coin miner virus. The names of the executive file can be diverse, but the impacts are usually the same. Because coin miners focus on cryptocurrency mining, they use all possible hardware capacity of your PC to conduct this procedure. This virus doesn’t care about the fact that you probably need to use your device for other tasks – it will always consume over 80% of your CPU power.
Essential.exe – Extremely high CPU and GPU usage
Besides CPU usage, some of the coin miners also use GPU power for their operations. In that situation, you will struggle also to see the mouse arrow moving – GPU is usually utilized on 100%. It is not as critical as processor for system work, so Essential.exe coin miner viruses do not waste time on trifles and use all of it. It sometimes may cause bad effects.
Shortly about cryptocurrency mining
Crypto mining is a term that means the action of calculating the transaction block hash. That is a integral element of any project based on the blockchain technology. Since this operation takes a lot of calculations, a high-end machine is required. Exactly, the video card is better for this purpose, because they have more cores available. Cryptocurrency mining farms usually consist of dozens of graphic cards to conduct their activity effectively. Such computer systems are not usable for “general” purposes, like gaming or web browsing. Crooks who gain money via this coin miner use someones’ PCs instead, even if they are used for the regular activity.2
List of the typical coin miner symptoms
How dangerous is the Essential.exe miner?
Coin miners does not deal damage to your files. However, they make a lot of unpleasant things with the whole system
First of all, Essential.exe virus makes your system overloaded. It is not able to run your applications anymore, since all CPU power is used by a virus. That malware does not care for your necessities, all it focuses on is generating income on you. Even if you are patient, and you waited until browser is open, you will likely struggle with incredibly slow efficiency. Pages will open up for years, any kind of logins will take about a minute – just a nightmare for a person who does a job online.
Essential.exe Technical Summary.
| File Name | Essential.exe |
| Type | Trojan Coin Miner |
| Detection Name | Trojan:Win32/CoinMiner |
| Distribution Method | Software bundling, Intrusive advertisement, redirects to shady sites etc. |
| Similar behavior | Wrap.exe, Vncutil.exe, Comsore3.exe |
| Removal | Download and install GridinSoft Anti-Malware for automatic Essential.exe removal. |
“Visible” harm is not a solitary negative thing coin miners perform to your PC. Essential.exe coin miner also deals damage to your OS. To carry out all malevolent functions properly, it wrecks the protection mechanisms of your system. You will likely see your Microsoft Defender disabled – malware halts it to avoid detection. If you open the HOSTS file, you will likely see a lot of new notes – they are brought in by this coin miner to connect your PC to a malicious cryptomining network. All these adjustments shall be thrown back to the initial state in the process of PC recovery.
Hardware effects of coin miner activity
Besides decreasing your computer’s performance, performing at peak power for long times may trigger damage to your device as well as raise power bills. PC components are created to easily deal with high load, but they are good with it only when they are in a good shape.
Small and well-protected processor cooling system is quite hard to crack. Meanwhile, GPUs have large and easy-to-access rotors, which can be easily cracked if touched while spinning, for instance, by the user much before the malware injection. Malfunctioning cooling system, together with the unusually high load caused by Essential.exe miner can easily lead to graphic processing unit failure3. Video cards are also tend to have very fast wearing when utilized for cryptocurrency mining. It is surely a bad situation when your GPU’s performance decreases on 20-30% only after 1-2 weeks of being exploited in such a way.
How did I get Essential.exe coin miner virus?
Coin miners are spread through different ways, but their main sources are malicious banners and programs from dubious sources
Coin miners are one of the most common malevolent programs among “serious” viruses. Adware sometimes works as a carrier for Essential.exe malware injection: it shows you the banners, which include a link to malware downloading. Sure, this abstract “malware” can belong to any type – an additional adware, spyware, rogue or backdoor. But the statistics show that approximately 30% of all malware spread through the malevolent banners are coin miners – and Essential.exe is just among them.4
The example of malicious banners you can see in the Internet
An additional way you could get this thing on your PC is by downloading it from the dubious website as a part of a program. People that spread hacked variants of well-known programs (which do not require the license key) have small chances to earn money. Therefore, there is a huge lure to add malware to the final package of the hacked application and get a coin for each setup. Prior to blaming these guys for hacking and malware distribution, ask yourself – is it OK to avoid paying for the program in this manner? It is much cheaper to pay $20-$30 at once than to pay a much greater sum for antivirus software and new parts for your computer.
How to remove the Essential.exe miner from my PC?
The best way to get rid of this coin miner virus is to use anti-malware software
Getting rid of such a virus demands using special program. Proper antivirus must have high performance at scanning and be lightweight – in order to create no problems with utilization also on weak PCs. Additionally, it is recommended to have on-run protection in your protection tool – to stop the virus even before it starts. Microsoft Defender does not have these elements for various factors. That’s why I’d advise you to use a third-party anti-malware program for that objective. GridinSoft Anti-Malware is a superb choice that fits each of the specified characteristics.5
Before the virus removal, it is important to reboot your system into Safe Mode with Networking. Since Essential.exe miner takes a lot of CPU capacity, it is required to stop it before launching the security program. Otherwise, your scan will last for years, even though the GridinSoft program is pretty lightweight.
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 system is in Safe Mode, all third-party apps, along with the majority of non-critical Windows components, are not started with the system start. That allows you to clean the system without dealing with high CPU usage of the coin miner.
Remove Essential.exe coin miner virus with GridinSoft Anti-Malware
Download and install GridinSoft Anti-Malware. You can use this anti-malware program for free during its 6-day trial period. In that term, all functions are available, and it takes no payments to remove malware from your system.
After activating your free trial, start Full scan. It may last up to 10 minutes. You may use the PC as usual.
When the scan is finished, press the Clean Now button to remove all detected elements from your system. This procedure takes less than a minute.
Now, you are good to go. Reboot your PC into a normal Windows mode and use just as there was nothing malicious.
Remove Essential.exe Virus ⛏️ Trojan Coin Miner
Name: Essential.exe
Description: The Essential.exe is a Trojan Coin Miner that uses the infected computer’s sources to mine electronic money without your authorization. This Essential.exe will create your CPU to go for very warm temperatures for prolonged periods of time, which could reduce the life of the CPU.
Operating System: Windows
Application Category: Trojan
User Review
( votes)References
- Read about why Monero and DarkCoin are so popular amongst cybercriminals.
- Detailed explanation of how does cryptomining work.
- About unwanted effects for GPUs in the process of cryptomining.
- Read more about various malware type on Cybersecurity Glossary.
- Our review on GridinSoft Anti-Malware.
