Troubleshooting

Error #102 Excavator.exe is missing.

Most likely your Antivirus (AV) or Microsoft Defender has deleted it. Make sure to add exception for following files:

• excavator.exe,
• NiceHashQuickMiner.exe and
• xmrig.exe

Warning #103 Your PC does not have enough Virtual Memory set.

This can cause mining failure. Increase your Virtual Memory size to at least 6000 MB times number of GPUs your PC has. Read here how to increase Virtual Memory size.

Excavator WARNING Device #X-X could not obtain power consumption!

Excavator is not capable of getting information about power consumption, therefore some functionality may not work (correctly). Fully reinstall your NVIDIA drivers to fix this issue.

Poor performance on GTX 1060, 1070 (Ti), 1080 (Ti).

You need to make sure, your card is running in P0 state. This can be achieved using some 3rd party tools as suggested in this Reddit thread.

Additionally, GTX 1080 and GTX 1080 Ti have GDDR5X memory which needs different memory timings for better performance. There is no publicly available code to do that, there are only closed source protected binaries of EthEnlargmentPill from unknown authors, which I do NOT suggest to use if you have any sensitive information.

When I do CPU mining, my CPU isn't fully loaded.

By default, NiceHash QuickMiner starts XMRig with 50% load hint. This can be easily changed to 100% or any other number in nhqm.conf by modifying extra launch parameters and providing hint for 100% load:

...
"CPUMinerELP":"--cpu-max-threads-hint 100 --print-time 15",
...

Excavator cannot connect and repeats warning handshake declined by remote peer.

Some routers/firewalls/modems may be blocking NiceHash domains. In that case, you have to check network security settings of your devices. In one particular case, someone had to disable Cyber Security on his Century Link Modem. Also note that this issue should be completely fixed in versions v0.3.2.6 and later as mining domains are now resolved using DNS over HTTPS.

I get NVML related error.

If you get error like this, then following is possible:

• You do not have supported hardware - NiceHash QuickMiner works only on NVIDIA video cards, it does not support AMD video cards!
• Your driver has just been updated; in that case, a simple restart of your PC will resolve the issue.
• You are using very old NVIDIA drivers. Update to the latest NVIDIA driver to fix the issue.

NiceHash QuickMiner starts with Windows too quickly. Can I delay it?

Yes, you can. Open Task Scheduler (write Task Scheduler in your search bar). Then follow markings from 1 to 4 from the picture below. Once you choose your wanted delay just close the dialog by pressing OK. Next time you are booting Windows, NiceHash QuickMiner would start with adjusted delay.

I am using another tool for managing my video card's fans (such as MSI Afterburner) and fan speed is occasionally reset to automatic. How can I fix this?

The problem is in default commands.json file shipped with version 0.4.1.3. This file commands that all fans are reset to automatic behavior when Excavator exits. You may have some instability and Excavator is occasionally restarted. This means automatic fan profile is applied every time this happens. To prevent this, you can either modify commands.json on your own or use this one with fan reset removed.