Excel.exe Virus (Coin Miner Trojan) Removal

Excel.exe executable file is related to a malevolent program that can correctly be defined as a coin miner trojan. That malware type utilizes your PC components to mine cryptocurrencies, primarily – Monero or DarkCoin¹. It makes your personal computer roughly nonfunctional due to high CPU utilization.

What is Excel.exe process?

Excel.exe is a malicious process created by coin miner virus

Excel.exe – Really high CPU as well as GPU usage

Besides CPU utilization, some of the coin miners additionally make use of GPU power for their tasks. In that situation, you will probably struggle even to see the mouse arrow moving – GPU is often utilized on 100%. It is not as crucial as CPU for system work, so Excel.exe coin miner viruses don’t waste time on trifles and utilize it all. It sometimes can lead to sad results.

Shortly about cryptocurrency mining

List of the typical coin miner symptoms

Your device overheats (system unit/laptop body is very hot)

You are not able to open your apps or they are opening for ages

Unknown process is running in the background and consumes your PC resources

Windows Defender does not respond

How dangerous is the Excel.exe miner?

Coin miners does not deal damage to your files. However, they make a lot of unpleasant things with the whole system

First, Excel.exe malware makes your system overloaded. It is unable to run your applications now, since all processor power is used by a virus. That malware does not care for your wants, all it focuses on is generating profits on you. Even if you are patient, and you waited until browser is open, you will likely experience incredibly sluggish efficiency. Pages will open up for years, any type of logins will take about a minute – just a nightmare for a person who does a job online.

Excel.exe Technical Summary.

File Name	Excel.exe
Type	Trojan Coin Miner
Detection Name	Trojan:Win32/CoinMiner
Distribution Method	Software bundling, Intrusive advertisement, redirects to shady sites etc.
Similar behavior	Rdpsaproxy.exe, Locationnotificationwindows.exe, Gameinputsvc.exe
Removal	Download and install GridinSoft Anti-Malware for automatic Excel.exe removal.

“Visible” damage is not a single bad activity coin miners perform to your PC. Excel.exe coin miner additionally deals damage to your operating system. To carry out all malicious functions effectively, it wrecks the security features of your system. You will likely see your Microsoft Defender disabled – malware stops it to avoid detection. If you open the HOSTS file, you will likely see a load of new notes – they are brought in by this trojan miner to connect your system to a malicious mining network. All these changes are about to be thrown back to the original in the process of computer recovery.

Hardware effects of coin miner activity

Besides slowing down your computer, running at peak level for long times may cause damage to your device as well as increase electricity expenses. PC elements are designed to easily deal with high load, but they can do so only when they are in a good shape.

Small and well-protected CPU cooling system is not very easy to crack. Meanwhile, graphic cards have large and easy-to-access fans, which can be easily broke if affected while spinning, for example, by the user much before the virus injection. Malfunctioning cooling system, together with the extremely high load caused by Excel.exe miner can easily lead to graphic card failure³. Graphic cards are also prone to have very fast wearing when used for crypto mining. It is surely an unwanted situation when the performance of your GPU plunges 20-30% just after several weeks of being exploited in such a way.

How did I get Excel.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

One more way you could get this item on your PC is by downloading it from the dubious web page as a part of a program. People that spread hacked variants of popular programs (which do not need the license key) have small chances to earn money. Thus, there is a huge lure to include malware to the final package of the hacked app and receive a coin for each installation. Prior to criticizing these people for hacking and also malware spreading, ask yourself – is it okay to avoid purchasing the program in this manner? It is much cheaper to pay $20-$30 one time than to pay a much bigger figure for antivirus program as well as new parts for your computer.

How to remove the Excel.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 system is in Safe Mode, all third-party apps, along with the majority of non-critical Windows components, are not launched with the system start. That allows you to clean the computer without dealing with high processor usage of the coin miner.