COM Surrogate stopped working - dllhost.exe

[dipo003]

This vista extreme gamers edition pc. Whenever i try to open some files especially multimedia files, it says com surrogate has stopped working and i will be asked to check for solution online or close the program. it states info on dllhost.exe and faut modules

anybody wanna help? urgent

 

[Archean]

Which software you are using to play your multimedia files? It is essential that you give details in this respect so the right solution can be suggested. Also, by any chance do you have any version of Nero installed on your PC? Regards

Also in addition to earlier post the reason for this error is:

The dllhost.exe process goes by the name COM Surrogate and the only time you're likely even to notice its existence is when it crashes and you get the message COM Surrogate has stopped working. What is this COM Surrogate and why does it keep crashing?

The COM Surrogate is a fancy name for Sacrificial process for a COM object that is run outside of the process that requested it. Explorer uses the COM Surrogate when extracting thumbnails, for example. If you go to a folder with thumbnails enabled, Explorer will fire off a COM Surrogate and use it to compute the thumbnails for the documents in the folder. It does this because Explorer has learned not to trust thumbnail extractors; they have a poor track record for stability. Explorer has decided to absorb the performance penalty in exchange for the improved reliability resulting in moving these dodgy bits of code out of the main Explorer process. When the thumbnail extractor crashes, the crash destroys the COM Surrogate process instead of Explorer.

In other words, the COM Surrogate is the I don't feel good about this code, so I'm going to ask COM to host it in another process. That way, if it crashes, it's the COM Surrogate sacrificial process that crashes instead of me process. And when it crashes, it just means that Explorer's worst fears were realized.

In practice, if you get these types of crashes when browsing folders containing video or media files, the problem is most likely a flaky codec.

Here is a link about how to fix it. Please let me know if I could be any help. Regards

 

[dipo003]

I found it helpful thanx
well, there r lots of applications on the system, vlc, total video converter player are the two upfronts. there was a vista codec installed on the system some time back. do you think i should reinstall or uninstall the codec i have the feeling that it may be the cause of this problem
Another thing i noticed with the laptop is that some of the video files are getting damaged or broken ..whatever. Some didnt play while some will stop at the middle, while some did crash the app. like runtime error c++ in vlc.
what do you think?
thanx in advance

 

[Archean]

Yes, that is a good starting point (i.e. uninstalling all video applications/codecs). I suggest using only one video player whichever you may like, VLC is very good, so is Media Player Classic - Home Cinema or CCCP.

dipo003 said......
Another thing i noticed with the laptop is that some of the video files are getting damaged or broken ..whatever. Some didnt play while some will stop at the middle, while some did crash the app. like runtime error c++ in vlc.

Have you tried switching video applications to see whether such videos work with it or not?