What is COM Surrogate Crash Error?

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A COM surrogate crash can actually be pretty much anything. It means some COM component (DLL) wanted to be hosted “out-of-proc” – or in other words, not inside the process that wants to use it.

In this case, the COM component happens to be a video codec. Let’s say, divx.dll.

Normally, COM components are loaded “in-proc” (in process). That would mean that Explorer.exe would load this DLL in order to pull those frames out of the video.

The problem is, if that DLL crashes, then Explorer crashes right along with it. So instead, Explorer is basically protecting itself by telling COM to load the DLL in a surrogate process. In this case, the surrogate is probably DLLHost.exe.

There are other surrogates, too, for more specialized purposes. Svchost.exe hosts a DLL that runs as a service. Prevhost.exe hosts previews for Explorer’s preview pane. SearchFilterHost.exe hosts IFilters for indexing files and other data.

Those last two are specialized surrogates, because they only work with a specific kind of COM component, and because they are run as “low integrity” processes, just like Protected Mode IE. That means they can’t even read or write the filesystem. That way, if there’s a security problem with a certain type of file they’re previewing or indexing (or a problem certain store, like Outlook or Windows Mail) – it won’t get triggered or be able to do any harm. An example of this was the .WMF vulnerability last year. Whereas Google Desktop Search and Copernic would trigger the WMF vulnerability during indexing, WDS did not (technically it did, but the exploit couldn’t actually do anything because it was isolated or sandboxed in this way).

i got my from a web site ethnic pass

I don’t have Vista but windows XP and I get this a lot when watching on line video. It seems to continue to work ok. Anyone know what is goiing on here?

I had the issue while watching a video with Nero 7 ultra (it is a really cool program) never had the problem before. i have been using Nero since august and never had the problem before. an hour before i had the problem i installed software for my creative mp3 player. I found that a new process was running on my task manger (I know all processes because there the first thing to change when infected with a Trojan horse or worm) i uninstalled the creative but no fix. I ran registry fix (a really nice program) and came up with 93 problems. i fixed the problems and checked the task manger and the dllhost was gone and i haven’t had the issue come back yet.

the best way to solve this is to change the data execution protocols, seems to solve the problem with no resultant problems

I am having that Com Surrogate problem and now all my videos that it lets me watch don’t have sound or it won’t let me watch them at all and I don’t even ahve Divx or Nero!!!!

Still having the problem after updating to the newest divx and nero. Did this today, still having the problem.