Why does dllhost.exe Com surrogate consumes memory untill crash

Anonymous
2013-04-24T21:17:11+00:00

Why does dllhost.exe  Com surrogate consumes memory untill crash.

It happens when I highlight or view a folder containing video files, Even if I close the folder or select a different folder the memory keeps getting consumed.

It seems to happen mostly with 3D Video files but it has done the same with 2D files.

So it seems to be a problem with the windows thumb nail system dealing with these files.

By the way trying to delete or move the file or folder while the Com Surrogate is consuming memory Delete can not complete the task.

What I have been doing is finding offending file selecting Delete, then go to task manager stopping Com Surrogate, then the file will delete.

Fix

"MS are aware of problems with certain chipset/driver combinations and the KB2670838 update

They are also aware of problems with the IE10 install

They are working on both issues, and will update as and when they are satisfied that they have solved the problems.

The recommendation in the meantime is that if the update doesn't install first time, make sure it's uninstalled, and then hide it - Windows Update will unhide it when it is updated."

So Uninstall IE10 and KB2670838 update, hide them from auto updating when thy pop back up to be updated the problem should be fixed.

Proof that MS knows that IE10 has problems on some hardware platforms is here.

  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/jj898509.aspx

Hope this helps Every One.

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Files, folders, and storage

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  1. Anonymous
    2013-05-24T09:55:22+00:00

    Never installed the IE10 update and the problem came up.

    But I just deinstalled the update 2670838. The thumbnail for the 3d-mp4 was then correctly generated.

    If installation of  IE10 causes the problem too, then both updates break something.

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-05-23T23:10:14+00:00

    I found the problem its MS Internet Explorer 10 update.

    I put in My old HDD and checked My problem files being the 3D Video files and I had no problems.

    Then I started to allow Windows to update, when I got done with installing IE 10 and the restart.

    The problem was there, So I did a system restore before the update to IE 10 and the problem went away.

    Good luck Hope every one has a restore point or you may be able to manually uninstall IE 10.

    For the time being Im going to use Fireox for security reasons being as IE 10 is a security update.

    By the way Im going to start a new thread called Why does thumbnails crash after installing IE 10.

    Also be aware of this update the link is here.http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2670838?wa=wsignin1.0%2cwsignin1.0

    It also goofs with your codecs and video API's

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-05-23T17:52:02+00:00

    I don't think its the codec any more I was using ffdshow_beta7_rev3154_20091209 which has a good encoder for making *.AVi container files using XVID codec.

    But after this thumbnail problem started Windows reported the crash being due to ffdshow and My encoder no longer appears in the choices for encoding My videos as if MS removed or blocked it.

    So now I have installed the stand alone XVID codec it shows up on the list of encoders and decodes standard AVI, MP4, MKV, files.

    But as for the 3D files compressed with AVC-1 mp4 the thumbnail/com surrogate/host.dll still pull their antics.

    By the way here is a link to an MS page that shows about mp4

    http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd757808(v=vs.85).aspx

    It may be helpful to you also if You want to know more about the codec's on your system and trouble shoot video file play back look up a freeware program called GSpot it can tell you what combinations of codec's splitters and or filters a file has used or needs to play correctly.

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  4. Anonymous
    2013-05-23T05:40:16+00:00

    You can replace task manager with Process Explorer.  When the dllhost.exe starts to chew up your memory, you can mouse over the dllhost.exe that is using up all the memory (there will be two of them), when you mouse over it you see the process that is running in dllhost's shell.  It is thumbcache.dll  So you see that is why all you are seeing the with or related to a 3D clip (I have the issue and it is a Toshiba 3d HD Camcorder Z-100 camera files I am editing with Sony Vegas, or moving with Windows Explorer.  I have Win 7 Ultimate 64 for my OS.  I am using Mpeg-4 .mp4 3d files.  I just ran chdsk on my PC and all is well... I suspect a bad Codec with a memory leak.  Now to figure out what codec is used to look an mp4 3d files... oh the fun... for now I just leave the task manager up and kill the dllhost as often as I need to... things seem to be fine with it killed LOL  Help Microsoft????

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  5. Anonymous
    2013-05-14T00:05:53+00:00

    Downloaded a 3D Trailer in MP4, side by side coded. My Standard MP4-Icon was shown and nothing out of the ordinary happened for a while. Except moving the file seemed impossible, but copying to another hdd worked.

    A while later I got a system freeze (during a flash vid in fullscreen), complete with NumLock dead. But the system recovered a few minutes later.

    Then came a Message, that I was out of memory, which actually was true, according to the Task Manager.

    Culprit was dllhost.exe which I could watch hogging all Memory it could get. After killing it with the Task Manager it started over again, leaking Memory every second.

    Searching the net suggeted something to do with the Thumbnails and I also found this Thread.

    I renamed the Trailer's extenstion from mp4 to unknown. The action could only be completed by killing dllhost.exe again. After doing that for both copies of the 3d-mp4, the Memory situation was normal again.

    Conclusion: Kudos to my Win7 64 Home Premium for actually recovering from such a situation without reboot or blue screen, shame on the programmers of a non critical background process like thumbnails to allow for critically failing the system by infinite memory leak and not every malfunction is a malware or virus.

    WORKAROUND at least for me: Changing the extension to a video extension that the system does not generate thumbnails for. In my case .mkv (not tested with Windows Media Player as I use other players)

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