Windows 7 dllhost.exe memory leak

Anonymous

Help! dllhost.exe grows like the blob till resources are gone and thumbnails turn to icons, file searching slowed

When I search for images on my drives, the thumbnails do not work after only a little while of searching. Also, the thumbnails on the desktop, or when searching open folders in windows, for images do not show up correctly. In the Resource Monitor > Memory tab, I can see dllhost.exe is growing like the blob. If I end the dllhost.exe process tree, things return to normal and my icons return to thumbnails little while, as dllhost.exe spawns again, and grows. I can squash it like I'm playing whack-a-program over and over and eventually see the thumbnails.

I have searched and only found the most mundane answers that are no help. I have no virus. My son has the same problem in with his Quad core I7 system running Windows 7 pro. System caches are cleaned out regularly, and the system performs flawlessly in every other way. This is not about video thumbnails. This is about picture thumbnails like .jpg and .png

Also, if I open a drive in my computer, the green search bar is very slow going to the right on each drive

System specifications

Windows 7 Pro (64 bit)

32GB DDR 3

AMD 8150 fx 8 core

Asus Motherboard

2 separate SLC SSDs, and 4 spindle drives

Kaspersky Internet Security 2014

50Mb cable internet connection

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous

I have resolved the issue and optimized my computer by leaps and bounds. Albeit, many computer problems are caused by human error, corrupted files, virus activity, overloads of this and that. This is a new installation of Windows 7, with the above mentioned specs and respectable internet security suite. I use the MVPS hosts file, that I add the updates to, and I update it myself, if something nasty comes up and I keep a good eye on my cookies regularly.

Here's what I did. I ran Autoruns by Sysinternals and unchecked any references to Microsoft Office (Office still works fine, btw). Since I don't use adobe acrobat to read PDFs, I unchecked the autoruns there also (I use foxit) I believe there are many items in that list that I could have unchecked, but if I wasn't exactly sure what it was, I left it alone. I only went by what I saw in the description and location. I recommend this to anyone having problems of this nature and general slow down of their system. Be careful, and try to understand what you're unchecking as a program that automatically starts in the background when Windows starts. The whole process took less than 20 minutes of going through the list for me.

All of my thumbnails work perfect, videos, .jpg, .png, etc.

Note:

I do not believe that any updates to my computer caused this problem as I originally proposed, as I installed windows and completely shut off all MS updates, but yet the problem started right after one of my other software installations.

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Anonymous

I recently bought a new computer with windows professional loaded. No Microsoft office products on this PC.

I downloaded Adobe reader. Then was asked to update adobe on 9/27/14. After the update my cpu went bonkers with dllhost.exe running amuck. I removed adobe and that fixed the problem. The last update seemed to be the culprit.

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Anonymous

THANK YOU OSCAR

This was the problem

I got rid of the MP4s that did not have thumbnails in my download folder and this fixed the problem!

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78 additional answers

Anonymous

2014-03-29T19:06:44+00:00

I am afraid you have not properly read my solution, or you have not understood it.

I never offered a disk cleanup or partial or temporal solutions.

I offer a solution which, after 1 year, still works in my computer:

To avoid the faulty windows program which creates the videos thumbnails, and replace it with a third party program, which actually works faster and adds new features (like FLV thumbnails, for one).

This is a solution witch saved me (and many others, as far as I can see) from having to format the whole operating system and risk suffering the same problem eventually.

I suffered with this problem for months, without finding a solution, and I could not (for complicated reasons) reinstall my windows 7. That was not an option.

This is a "1 time, and forever" solution which actually solves the problem completely, in a matter of minutes. I wanted to share it with others just in case it could help anyone. It turns out it actually did!

I am sorry you cannot see that. At least I tried (successfully) to help others. I do not know what YOU are trying to accomplish with your reply...
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Anonymous

2014-03-29T15:59:16+00:00

This thread has become convoluted from what it was. The original tasker is to find a solution that doesn't involve an antivirus, or adding a third party program. It's not about 3d video thumbnails. It's about using the search function of images in a window that displays thumbnails. I see so many people giving mad props to others for solutions that simply don't fit the bill of actually working as a solution for the original tasker based upon prescribed parameters. We are no where near finding a solution than we were in the beginning when I first created this thread.

Offering non-solutions to a forum where generally tech savvy people share ideas

Disk cleanup? are you serious? Usually the first answers to questions offer the most mundane and unhelpful solutions. I've noticed this on several threads. I laugh when someone asks "Did you defrag your hard drive and empty your recycle bin?"... Sure, these are great ideas but not here.

The problem we have, is a problem, because it is based upon a system that is running normally, no viruses, and is cleaned out and reloaded with a fresh copy of Windows every few months to keep the system fresh and clean. It's based upon a system that has current high quality antivirus software and nothing unusual. It's based upon a system that has gone back and forth between AMD and Intel for processors. But, stuck with Windows 7 Pro and 32 GB of high speed DDR 3 (two different brands), two different SSDs, and different motherboards, different spindle drives.

A partial solution that worked temporarily

At one point, I was able to stop dllhost.exe by installing Windows and stopping any kind of updates. I think Windows forced an update that caused this error to occur again. I don't know what update caused this. I'm careful with the updates now, and I wish I knew the list of updates that are both helpful and harmless.
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