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

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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

2013-09-19T14:47:45+00:00

Hello Oscar...Thank you for your reply.

When I look at the process tab of the Task Manager, I have more than 10 dllhost.exe running at the same time and increasing in size . I did try and kill the big one first but soon after, they came back ( re-generating).

These files re-generate faster than I can kill them. I will try to stop any of the vidio running ( as you suggest above) and then try again to stop these files ( hope there will not be as many).

What would happing if I re-name this file exstension to something like dllhost.eexe ( in the window/system32 directory) so that it does not start at all ( do you think this would stop this file from executing untill I have a chance to install your proposed solution and then change back the extention to .exe)

I am not a computer expert as you can tell , just a user, I don't know the consequences of doing the above if it creates more problem.

Many thanks for your time in helping someone like me

Gerry
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Anonymous

2013-09-19T09:37:33+00:00

Oscar Thanks for the solution (I have the same problem as everyone else)

I did not kill the dllhost.exe ( How do you normally kill this file? change the .exe to different extension or delete it or what?) and installed your suggested download and it did not work . It was my fault since I did not kill the file as you suggested

Hello Gerry, when I reffer to killing the dllhost.exe I mean to kill the process, not to delete the file.

To kill or stop a windows process, you must open the task manager, usually by pressing the keys "Ctrl"+"alt"+"del" at the same time, wich will open a full screen menu, in wich you must select the last option: "open the task manager".

After that you will be directed to your desktop again, and an new window will appear in a few moments (or minutes if your dllhost.exe is slowind down your computer).

In this new window (task manager) you will see several tags: Applications, processes, services... (the actual words can vary since my windows is in spanish and I am not sure if in english those words are the same).

Click on "processes" (the second tab starting left), and look for the dllhost.exe. If your problem is the same as us, this file will be growing by the second, or it will be already huge. Click on it with the RIGHT mouse button to open a menu, in wich you will select the "finish process" (or similar) option.

In a few seconds the process will disappear, and your system will respond again.

If you have any window open containing video files, it is possible the process starts again after a few seconds of killing it. Close all windows and kill it again.

After it is dead, install the media preview again making sure you select all thumbail options.

Now reestart windows, just in case.

If after doing this exactly like I explained your problem persists, it is possible your problem is different than ours. Perhaps you have a virus...

I hope this explanation helps.

Regards!
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