Multiple instances of dllhost.exe*32 Com Surrogate killing memory

MRobins1057 · 02 Nov 2014

I am running Windows 7 64 bit premium home edition, 1.34TB HD and 8 GB Memory, IE 11 which I just installed. The last couple of days I've noticed my performance slowing to a crawl. My IE passwords and user names no longer load, Icons in my folders no longer load, the Progress Bar in each folder is continually loading each time I open a folder. I opened Task Manager and found multiple instances of dllhost.exe*32 running, and some with a Memory usage over 200,00k.

I've run TDSSKiller, RKill, Malwarebytes, Hitman, Rogue Killer and Emission in that order to make sure it wasn't a Trojan masking itself as a valid dll, no effect. Reading through the forums I see where a corrupt movie file or extension can cause this. I wanted to do a Restore to an earlier point, but the earliest I can go to is yesterday, and that's when I first started troubleshooting. Last week I loaded Windows Live Movie Maker. I was unable to do an uninstall as there was no uninstall command. I've ran every movie file that I can find in an attempt to isolate it to delete it - no luck. If anyone has any suggestions I would appreciate it. I'm no PC expert, in fact I probably know just enough to be dangerous, so keep that in mind when replying.

One other thing that came to mind after I posted is if I set all my folders to use Icons only, no thumbnails, the problem goes away.

Thanks

DMHolt57 · 02 Nov 2014

Check in the folder options from control panel, look in the view tab, uncheck box for Launch folder windows in a separate process... then reboot.

MRobins1057 · 02 Nov 2014

Thank you for the reply. I did, and no joy. Same symptom. Thanks for the suggestion just the same.

Cheers
Mike

cmmtch · 02 Nov 2014

Check this link https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=dllhost.exe+*32 I had this occur, MSE stopped most of it when it happened, got a pop up notice, but still had multiple instances of dllhost.exe *32 in Task Manager processes . I have an AMD temperature application on my desktop shows CPU and MB temps and fans speeds. CPU temp is usually in the low 30 C range, it was jumping to mid 40 C constantly, I would end the 10 or 15 instances of it and things would calm down for a short time but soon there'd be two dozen instances of dllhost.exe *32 running.

Ran Super Anti Spyware and Adwcleaner to remove it. Per the Google link it could have been much more serious than it turned out to be, I have to think it was MSE real time protection that prevented it from being a worse case scenario.

You might want to take advantage of the security forum here and post there. Some very knowledgeable people that can help.