Why does dllhost.exe Com surrogate consumes memory untill crash

There are vulnerabilities to outside attacks and internal malfunctions that are described here;

https://media.blackhat.com/bh-dc-11/Larimer/BlackHat\_DC\_2011\_Larimer\_Vulnerabiliters%20w-removeable%20storage-Slides.pdf

The presentation also helps put the issues into a context for me.

dllhost.exe COM Surrogate is the thumbnail handler that can't seem to do its job right but keeps trying.  Boy, is it trying.

It could be that the handles on 3D videos are misinterpreted or absent, so they are generated again and again but just fail to stick.  There is a chance that some Java window (in a browser or within Explorer or other application) has terminated,closed a window,  and shut down the thumbnail process, only to restart and fail again.  It seems likely that whatever process is failing it re-initiates because the file that it is looking for is not there, or a link in the process is not functional.

There are possible contribution factors for me.  The 3D video file types, icons, or thumbs, may not in an acceptable format due to the presence of tags that indicate that they are 3D.  Sony may not have worked that part out.   Editing the file type descriptor could determine if that is the issue if one knew how to do that.

Another possible factor for me is that my folders with jpg and tiff images are very large (50-meg to 2gig @) , and the thumbs take a while to generate.   Thumbs take a while appear, and often new thumbs are being generated each time a folder is opened.  I also have issues with my ASUS mother board forgetting that it is supposed to continue to operate the USB3 ports.

Task manager has now stopped showing the task what it is running and the memory use,   Only the processor load is now displayed.  The accessory "System Resources" temporarily showed what else is running but it has stopped showing it now too.

This has driven me to allow Windows updates again.   But it does not seem to have any positive influence on my system or this issue.  Maybe there is a virus.  Or perhaps it is simply not practical to produce large panoramas or 3D videos on Windows based systems.  Some of us have spent days chasing this and have become reluctant to try things that take time and often make things worse.   

If I have to do a clean install I might want to do a dual boot and try Linux. The red herring for today is this one;

http://malwaretips.com/blogs/dllhost-exe-32-com-surrogate-removal/

Sisyphus

This is really bad advice. It is basically a generic response for any Windows problem. Running 15 malware checkers, especially one with "super" in the name is unlikely to fix anything. And the "if all else fails do a clean install of Windows" is Windows 95 advice. Do not pay any attention to this "solution."

In my case, I needed to turn of multi-sampling anti-aliasing in the Intel graphics control panel under 3D. after that, com surrogate worked fine for me!

You can also use this tool:

http://www.symantec.com/security\_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2014-111020-0511-99

Try running system file checker through cmd. 

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929833 

It is recommended to perform scan using:

http://www.malwarebytes.org/

Make sure your system is clean first. use CCleaner to get rid of junk files: http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download

Perform scan for spyware also using superantispyware http://www.superantispyware.com/ 

Hi Guys,

I just fixed the com surrogate issue for my pc and thought perhaps this could help others.

System:

Windows 10, HP elitebook 8540w, Intel i7 (1.6 Ghz), 8 gb RAM, 250Gb samsung EVO ssd.

Problem:

Com surrogate standard used 15-20 percent of cpu (Intel i7 1.5 Ghz) and my fan was blowing crazy all the time while browsing my pc using file explorer or even at idle. Each time it blows for a couple of seconds making noise, then stops and after a while starts again. 

Besides this my explorer was have a lot of trouble. Loading after opening took forever and in some cases did not even load. When navigated to a specific folder there was no problem. Also, thumbnails weren't displayed, just blank file icons. 

Solution(s):

I googled for com surrogate problem and for windows 10 thumbnail problem. First I applied the solution mentioned above, running system file checker through cmd. It said there were corrupted files and that it repaired them. Then I did the malware (like mentioned above). 59 files were found, all moved to quarantine. Many of them had "pup.optional.Amonetize" in their name....

I did not use cc cleaner because when I googled for the thumbnail problem I found that third party programs like that can cause the problem with the thumbnail. According to that website I shift-deleted the content of the folder so explorer starts from scratch with thumbnails: "C:\Users*Username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer" .*

Some files remained but that shouldn't be a problem.

After a reboot my fan was running like it should, nice and slow. When starting explorer, it instantly showed my files, like it should. FINALLY!

Notes:

Before I was looking for [SSD / indexing / windows search] problems. Some solutions explained disabling the windows search service via services.msc through RUN, but then ( of course) the search function in the start menu after pressing the windows button didn't work, which sucks because when it works its very fast. Apparently this was not a problem, but I guess a combination of resetting my thumbnail folder and removing malware files fixed it for me.

Hope this helps someone!

Happy fixing.