Pretty smart, right?Īctually, if you download Process Explorer, you can see the COM object I am referring to above. Now, if the COM object crashed, it would only take out the COM Surrogate process and Explorer would continue running. So, in the Explorer example, the COM object would not run in the explorer.exe process, but instead in this newly created COM surrogate process. To fix this issue, Microsoft came up with the COM Surrogate process that basically ran the COM object in a separate process than the one that requested it.
That meant your whole system would crash if a COM object failed for any reason. However, the big problem with these COM objects was that they would crash and bring the Explorer process down with it too. For example, Windows Explorer has a COM object that allows it to create thumbnails for images and videos in a folder. This is used for certain programs in Windows 10 also.
That probably makes no sense, so let’s explain it in more detail.īasically, Microsoft created an interface for developers to create extensions to programs called COM Objects. It’s called dllhost because the process is hosting DLL files. It’s a legitimate Windows 10 process that runs in the background. Thankfully, COM Surrogate is not a virus (most of the time). You’ll also notice that the process runs under your username and not the System or Local Service or Network Service accounts. If you right-click on either and choose Go to Details, you’ll see that the process name is actually dllhost.exe.
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