What is COM Surrogate?
COM Surrogate is a genuine system process on Windows that is responsible for running and hosting COM objects. You may also see it as “dllhost.exe” in your Task Manager, since this is the name of the executable file hosting the COM Surrogate process. COM, or Component Object Model is a binary-interface standard, introduced by Microsoft to allow different components of the software to interact with one another, irrespective of the language they were programmed in. In simpler terms, it acts as a mediator or translator in allowing the software components to “talk” to one another. It’s essentially a helper program that acts as a sandbox for potentially unstable COM objects, preventing them from crashing the main program they’re associated with. COM Surrogate is used to load DLLs, so while interacting with Microsoft Explorer, it acts as a ‘sacrificial‘ process, isolating it from the main program. This ensures that if one DLL fails, Explorer as a whole doesn’t crash. If you still don’t understand what this means, please read further, as this may clarify the purpose and use of this process within Windows.
What is the Purpose of COM Surrogate?
While the main purpose of COM Surrogate is to act as a protective layer in opening COM files, separate from the main program, they are also used to generate thumbnails for different file types in Windows Explorer, like images, documents and videos. The reason for this is quite self-explanatory—thumbnails for different files will allow you to quickly identify them. In addition to this, COM Surrogate is used for displaying icon overlays, which are small previews that appear when you hover your cursor over a file. Other than that, it is used to play specific types of media in Windows Media Player. Since all of the above tasks aren’t very resource-intensive, this process shouldn’t consistently consume a lot of your CPU resources. If it does, try validating if the COM Surrogate process in your Task Manager is legit, or simply a virus.
Is COM Surrogate a Virus?
COM Surrogate is NOT a virus, although some exploit developers or hackers can take advantage of its legitimacy and create viruses or malware with the same name. This is why it is important to identify whether COM Surrogate on your PC is legitimate or not. To do this, open Task Manager, right-click on “COM Surrogate,” and select ‘Open File Location.’ If the file destination directs you to C:/Windows/System32, it is legitimate. However, if you see a different folder, try to terminate the process and delete the entire destination folder. In general, it is not advisable to remove COM Surrogate since it is a core Windows process. Nevertheless, if you have verified its legitimacy and the process continues to consume excessive system resources, it is possible that it may be processing data in the background and so, it will likely resolve on its own after some time.
