Tcmsetup.exe process belongs to a harmful application that can correctly be defined as a coin miner trojan virus. That malware form uses your hardware to mine cryptocurrencies, primarily – Monero or DarkCoin1. It makes your personal computer roughly unusable due to high CPU utilization.
What is Tcmsetup.exe process?
Tcmsetup.exe is a malicious process created by coin miner virus
Tcmsetup.exe – Very high CPU/GPU usage
Besides CPU usage, some of the coin miners also make use of GPU power for their operations. In that situation, you will probably struggle also to see the mouse cursor moving – GPU is often used on 100%. It is not as crucial as CPU for system work, so Tcmsetup.exe coin miner viruses do not waste time on trifles and utilize it all. It sometimes may result in sad results.
Shortly about cryptocurrency mining
List of the typical coin miner symptoms
How dangerous is the Tcmsetup.exe miner?
Coin miners does not deal damage to your files. However, they make a lot of unpleasant things with the whole system
Firstly, Tcmsetup.exe malware makes your system overloaded. It is unable to run your applications anymore, as all processor power is used by a malware. That malware does not care for your needs, all it pays attention to is making money on you. Even if you are patient, and you waited until web browser is open, you will likely experience exceptionally sluggish performance. Pages can open up for years, any type of logins will likely take about a minute – just a horror story for a person who works online.
Tcmsetup.exe Technical Summary.
| File Name | Tcmsetup.exe |
| Type | Trojan Coin Miner |
| Detection Name | Trojan:Win32/CoinMiner |
| Distribution Method | Software bundling, Intrusive advertisement, redirects to shady sites etc. |
| Similar behavior | Regini.exe, Cipher.exe, Wsmprovhost.exe |
| Removal | Download and install GridinSoft Anti-Malware for automatic Tcmsetup.exe removal. |
“Visible” damage is not a solitary unpleasant activity coin miners perform to your PC. Tcmsetup.exe coin miner additionally deals damage to your operating system. To execute all malicious operations properly, it ruins the security mechanisms of your system. You will likely see your Microsoft Defender disabled – malware halts it to prevent recognition. If you open the HOSTS file, you will likely see a load of new entries – they are added by this coin miner to connect your computer to a malicious cryptomining network. All these changes 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, running at peak level for a long period of time may cause damage to your machine as well as increase power bills. PC elements are designed to easily deal with high load, but they are good with it only in case when they are in a good shape.
Little and covered processor cooling system is quite hard to damage. Meanwhile, GPUs have large and easy-to-access rotors, which can be easily broke if affected while running, for instance, by the user much earlier before the coin-miner injection. Malfunctioning cooling system, together with the very high load caused by Tcmsetup.exe can easily lead to graphic processing unit failure3. Graphic cards are also tend to have fast wearing when used for cryptocurrency mining. It is surely a bad situation when the performance of your graphic card decreases on 20-30% only after several weeks of being exploited in such a way.
How did I get Tcmsetup.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 thing on your PC is by downloading it from the unreliable web page as a part of a program. People that spread hacked variants of well-known programs (which do not need the license key) have small chances to make money. Hence, there is a huge lure to add in malware to the final package of the hacked application and receive a coin for every installation. Before criticizing these guys for hacking and malware spreading, ask yourself – is it okay to avoid paying for the program in this manner? It is more affordable to pay $20-$30 one time than to pay a much greater sum for antivirus software and new parts for your PC.
How to remove the Tcmsetup.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 software, along with the majority of non-critical system components, are not started with the system start. That allows you to clean the PC without dealing with high processor 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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