A lot of people face a dilemma on what to do when finding a COM surrogate running on Windows 10. Well, can be observed when you take a peek at the Task Manager.

This might not be a common activity to view the running apps on Windows. However, you would do this if you are having issues with the computer speed or with programs that you need to close right away.

To give you an idea what a COM surrogate is, here are some useful information that you might find interesting. Basically, it is a program called dllhost.exe. It also runs under the username you are using and not the System or Network Service or Local Service accounts.

Fortunately, you don’t have to worry about it because it is not a virus. In fact, it is a legit process of Windows 10 running in the background. It is also called dllhost as it hosts DLL files.

Take note that Microsoft has created an interface for developers to make extensions to programs named COM Objects. For instance, the Windows Explorer has a COM object allowing it to make thumbnails for images and videos in one folder.

The only problem is that when these COM objects would bring the Explorer process down as it crashes. This means that when a COM object would have failed for just about any reason, then your whole system would also crash.

Good thing though is that you can fix this issue as Microsoft has come up with the COM Surrogate process. This would run the COM object in a different process instead of the one that made the request. This means that the COM object will not run in the explorer.exe process in the case of the Windows Explorer with COM object. However, it would run in the newly created COM surrogate process.

Therefore, if in the event when a COM object would crash, only the COM Surrogate process would be affected and the Windows Explorer will continue to run.

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