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

2013-09-19T15:33:00+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

Hello, the problem you are explaining differs from our common problem. I am affraid you have a different issue (probably a virus) and it is beyond my capabilities to help you in this particular matter.

I can tell you thoug you must not rename the original file dllhost.exe because it is an essencial part of the operative system and it is responsible for many other functions.

If all your windows are closed and there are no video files in your desktop, the dllhost.exe is not attempting to create a thumbail, so it should not regenerate as you explained.

Since it is regenerating (and duplicating) for a diferent cause and reason than the one wich generates our problem, the solution I offer is of no use for your problem.

I am sory bit it looks like you will have to backup all your files and re-install the operative system.

Best of luck!
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Anonymous

2013-09-25T04:42:08+00:00

I have been struggling with this problem for months without trying to solve it and it took hours to find this once i finely got fed up enough to fix it. Thank you so much! This program is amazing.
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