Why does dllhost.exe Com surrogate consumes memory untill crash

I am from India.  I faced the same problem. Unwittingly I had downloaded a  3d video through some video download programme.  The video got downloaded in mpg4 format. At the outset nothing was mentioned on the display that it was a 3d video. When I played it it played in two frames within vertical bifurcation of the screen.  When I wanted to delete it, it was not accessible to  recycle bin, but it was showing continously a frame showing  as if it was going on searching for some thing. And in the mean while, when I had seen the task manager, the process memory for dllhost.exe was amazinginlgy increasing continuously and the system was becoming dead slow. Thinking that something was wrong, I  shutdown the system.  This happened several times but no damaze (or crash) was done to the system, since I shutdown the system everytime before it was late. 

I couldfind solution by follwing the Microsoft Community above.  Thanks to the FORUM.  What I did was by gathering information from above forum discussion was:

1. I uninstalled the Microsoft update: KB2670838

2. I updated the HD Graphic card in the system ( following the procedures discussed in the forums) .

That'all.  Done.  Now it is working well.  I could delete the 3d video which was downloaded.  Now my system is working perfect.  If I want now I can download the above update NO. KB2670838 and do not go for 3d video downloads ever.  Thanks to Microsoft and to all revered members above. VG Krishna, Hyderabad, India.

thumbnails are essentially cached. So, if dllhost decides to run amok with the excuse of loading thumbnail

Exactly! Should you have cached thumbnails for the 3D files, there won't be problems. Loading and displaying thumbs is no problem. But creating them. (this is actually a problem pinning the bug to the update. If you uninstall it, create thumbs and reinstall it, it would work fine - till the next new 3D file is found)

Since there won't be thumbnails created anyway, one can try to deactivate thumbnails for the folders or devices wich have 3D files inside.

The script is a good workaround, but maybe you could terminate dllhost based on size? As far as I know, the dllhost does other things beside thumbnails, and the scipt could have side effects.

objProcess.WorkingSetSize might be the parameter to use.

But I find it hard to understand the connection of KB2670838 making dllhost go haywire.

See the post by Microsoft talking about this update.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2670838/en-us

The update has these in its updated component list:

Windows Imaging Component

H.264 Video Decoder

JPEG XR codec

To create a thumbnail, windows has to open the file and decode some stills. My best guess is, there is an optimization wich fails to compress the thumbnail or fails to decode stills from the mp4. Side by Side 3D is almost two identical images inside one image and should compress very well.

Since I hear no complains about being unable to play 3D mp4, the h.264 might be fine, but the file wich is processed is locked, so this indicates, dllhost is still trying to read still images from it.

There is a solution to continuously kill dllhost.exe. You can find the vbs script you can run to actively kill it from the memory every 50 to 60 seconds.

http://trialsanserror.com/babybluescreen/2014/04/24/the-dllhost.exe-memory-leak

 I don't know how long we have been telling Microsoft about this problem.  I spent a afternoon with Microsoft 2nd tier tech support, and another 3 hours the next day before he believed me. He told me about all he could do was forward it, but he would never get any feedback.  I thought I was doing well keeping update KB2670838 off my machine.  But somehow, it got in again.  At least this time I knew where to look and I un installed it and again, made it so it would not appear again.  But it is sort of like the Bing toolbar - you can mark it so that it is not suppose to show up on your updates any more, but it comes back the next day.  Sickening

What is so strange is that Microsoft, if they wanted to can ignore us, and just join any international 3D forum they like.  They will hear the same thing from EVERYONE.  KB2670838 is a BAD update and screws your computer up when it is installed and you are trying to work with 3D movies.  I have come out looking like a hero many times just by uninstalling KB2670838 and it fixed my friends computers.

When did we tell Microsoft about this, April of 2013?  And to date, they do not believe us??!! It has been over a year?  Apple would not let a film problem fester this long.

If Sony Pro 12 ran under unbuntu or a Mac, I would drop Microsoft in a New York minute.  They do not care about us film makers - even when Microsoft's own second tier tech support can see it with his own eyes. 

Thank you for posting the above post.  At least someone is taking action.

All the best,

jack

Your reply is much appreciated. 

Deleting a system update is not recommended when it comes to "keeping your computer secure". Most of the updates pushed by Microsoft are dependent on the updates pushed previously. 

You can add another step to the fix recommended. Disable the updates "At your own risk", before deleting/uninstalling KB2670838. 

But I find it hard to understand the connection of KB2670838 making dllhost go haywire.

See the post by Microsoft talking about this update.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2670838/en-us

There is a solution to continuously kill dllhost.exe. You can find the vbs script you can run to actively kill it from the memory every 50 to 60 seconds.

http://trialsanserror.com/babybluescreen/2014/04/24/the-dllhost.exe-memory-leak

It might be easier to just deactivate the thumbnails, if that is the reason for the memory leak. In my case I had only one file and just renamed it from mp4 to mkv, so no thumbs will be created for it.

The advantage of this script is that it gives thumbnails around 60 seconds to load. When dllhost decides to run amok and grab memory, it kills it at the 60th second. Now loading thumbnails should not be a hard task for an OS which requires 1 GB of RAM and thumbnails are essentially cached. So, if dllhost decides to run amok with the excuse of loading thumbnails and grab all the precious memory,the only solution is to actively kill it. 

So as I have experienced when writing that script, I found that I can keep thumbnails active and let that script silently kill dllhost. From my experience of using that script, dllhost managed to grab around 500Mb of RAM before it was killed off by it.