The Christmas.exe in Task Manager and the Christmas theme wreath banner that covers half of your screen on Windows 11 are not malware but a new promotional campaign by ASUS on some PCs. It’s driving many people crazy, and it looks like whoever approved this campaign didn’t realize that it has the potential to do severe damage.
Please don’t freak out if you boot to the Windows 11 desktop today or you’re in the middle of a game, and then there’s a large banner wishing you Christmas with a wreath. The banner, which covers 1/3rd of the screen, is not malware but a new Asus promotion. Even worse, the malware-looking Christmas wreath is linked to a process called “Christmas.exe.”
A couple of people reached out to Windows Latest to ask me if I were aware of a potential new malware that has a Christmas wreath at the bottom of the screen and an associated process called “Christmas.exe”. I looked into it, and it turns out that this is not malware.
It is a part of the ASUS Armoury Crate software that is pre-installed on some ASUS PCs.
ASUS uses it to display a holiday-themed splash screen, but this time, they didn’t clearly brand it or explain what’s even happening in the below situation.
As shown in the above screenshot, what we have is a Windows desktop with a blue Windows 11 background (Bloom). At the bottom of the screen, there is a Christmas wreath with festive lights and a red button in the center.
It also has a message saying, “Press ESC to exit.”
If you look closely, there’s a space button as well.
Christmas wreath banner on Windows 11 is insanely stupid. Christmas.exe makes it worse.
As reported by several users in a forum post first spotted by Windows Latest, as soon as some people turned on their ASUS PC, a black bar showed up at the bottom of the screen with a Christmas wreath.
The Christmas themed banner is so unpolished and poorly designed that it initially appears to be a part of a game or some malware. If you go to the Task Manager, you’ll notice that the whole banner is linked to a process named “Christmas.exe”.
Many of our readers thought that they’d been hacked or were being ransomware, especially since Christmas-themed malware has been a thing.
What’s interesting is that the banner disappears on its own and doesn’t even show up in the Task Manager unless you keep it open.
“We’re back at it again. This time the banner not only covered part of the screen, but also caused a RAM leak. I was only able to close it through the task manager,” one of the frustrated users noted. “Brilliant, Asus, to congratulate your customers with some kind of virus.”
“What is wrong with you, Asus? I disconnected my internet opened the file location of Christmas.exe from the process in Task Manager and seen it was in the Asus folder in Program Data. First, Google was some old worm from years ago with the same name,” another user noted.
While digging further, we used Task Manager to trace the location of the process and it’s apparently inside:
- C:ProgramDataASUSFestsEffectdataHappyNewYearHappyNewYear.exe
- C:ProgramDataASUSFestsEffectdataChristmaschristmas.exe
As shown in the above screenshot, Christmas.exe size is about 106 KB.
As mentioned at the outset, ASUS Armoury Crate, which is preinstalled on some systems is responsible for pulling this off. In the ASUS armoury crate, when you open Aura, Aura effects, then you’ll also see a festive event option. This “feature” or malware is related to the effects.
Based on the references we saw, we wouldn’t be surprised if you end up seeing a similar banner on the New Year. To stop ASUS from spamming Windows 11, you can use the official uninstaller for ASUS Armoury from the company’s website.
Remember that the software will try to install again automatically, so make sure you turn it off from ASUS BIOS. To block Armoury Crate on an ASUS motherboard, open BIOS by pressing Del or F2 during startup.
Once done, switch to Advanced Mode by pressing F7, navigate to the Tool menu, locate ASUS Armoury Crate, and change the option [Download & Install ARMOURY CRATE app] from Enabled to Disabled. Save and exit the BIOS.
Or you can just ignore all of this, as the banner automatically goes away after the holiday.
Have you also seen one of these banners? Let us know in the comments below.
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