What is COM Surrogate in Windows 10

What is COM Surrogate?

COM Surrogate is simply a process that you may find running in your Windows 10 task manager. Sometimes they may be more than one COM surrogate process running at the same time, you don’t need to panic, it’s not a virus. The COM Surrogate process is needed to load DLL files and it plays a vital role in your Windows.

The information in this article apply to Windows 10, Windows 8, and Windows 7.

COM Surrogate is an alternative name for a process called dllhost.exe which has been in Windows 7 and is currently in Windows 8 and Windows 10 too and it is normally located in task manager. It performs a number of tasks such as isolating DLLs from the main Windows file explorer and also grabbing thumbnails for images or document in a folder. The reason for that is in case if anything goes wrong with those DLLs or they crash, they won’t take Windows Explorer with them. COM Surrogate makes your Windows PC more stable.

Is COM Surrogate a virus?

COM Surrogate processes are not virus but sometimes viruses and malware disguises themselves as COM Surrogate. 

Does COM Surrogate Consume System Resources?

COM Surrogate uses small amount of system resources, one or two percent of your CPU if you end up with a number of COM Surrogate processes running at the same time. So it shouldn’t be particularly noticeable.

How to Check if COM Surrogate is Malware or Virus

To check if COM Surrogate is a virus: Open your task manager and check the location of the COM Surrogate process, if its located somewhere in System32 then it is unlikely to be a virus.  You can also check if your COM Surrogate processes are potential malware in the task manager by right-clicking on COM Surrogate, then select Open File Location. If that leads you to the C:>Windows>System32 folder and a file named dllhose.ext, then you can rest easy knowing COM Surrogate is certainly not a malware but if it takes you to a folder you don’t know or recognize, Then it might be virus, you need to run anti-virus scan, you can target that particular file or folder to be sure.