PC Problem

[The Red Mage]

I've been battling with this shitty COM Surrogate/ IE problem for the passed three days, and I'm losing. Since I can't fully uninstall IE, I can only block it from working, but blocking it from working... still causes it to function whenever it wants, I'm getting nowhere. I've tried all the CMD entry tricks, deleted all recent picture/video downloads that could trigger the issue, tried to delete every file with a broken thumbail, etc. I just can't get it to go away.

Now my computer is starting up with like 8 IEs running, and I can't get them to go away. I've tried safe mode removing IE, but it just downgrades it from 10->9->7 after each restart and never fully uninstalls it. I've checked each Surrogate and suspicious process's file location, and they are all where they should be. It's just causing my PC to boot up at like 95% memory used, and impossible to play or watch anything. No bueno.

[Ogre Time Yay]

Let me see if I can help ya out, what home page do you have your IE set to? If you have your home page set to google.com, set it to something else. If it's not on google.com and it's still having issues, change your homepage to something else.

If you downloaded any recent Windows themes (ones to change the appearance and sound effects of your desktop and nearly everything in general), get rid of it and the exe files for it that initiated the theme.

Lastly, click Start, and in the search bar type in "msconfig", go to the Startup tab, if it lists a bunch of browser pages on it to launch upon bootup simply remove those entries. Also be sure to check your Internet Options to see if you have multiple home pages listed.



If none of that works, I recommend using SpyBot (get the free edition), let that run and clean out a few things on the side, it won't conflict with other virus scanners you might have on your computer.
www.safer-networking.org/dl/
((Be sure to run it as administrator))


Let me know if any of those work or not.

[Valimar Dragonbane]

Oh this!  I have seen this -and- fixed it!  Be prepared to spend some time and multiple reboots.  You want 4 different programs for this beastie:
AdwCleaner
Junkware Removal
Hitman Pro
MalWareBytes

Run them in the order listed above, reboot when it prompts, and you should be good to go.

[The Red Mage]

Nov 14, 2014 21:58:31 GMT -5 Ogre Time Yay said:

Let me see if I can help ya out, what home page do you have your IE set to? If you have your home page set to google.com, set it to something else. If it's not on google.com and it's still having issues, change your homepage to something else.

If you downloaded any recent Windows themes (ones to change the appearance and sound effects of your desktop and nearly everything in general), get rid of it and the exe files for it that initiated the theme.

Lastly, click Start, and in the search bar type in "msconfig", go to the Startup tab, if it lists a bunch of browser pages on it to launch upon bootup simply remove those entries. Also be sure to check your Internet Options to see if you have multiple home pages listed.



If none of that works, I recommend using SpyBot (get the free edition), let that run and clean out a few things on the side, it won't conflict with other virus scanners you might have on your computer.
www.safer-networking.org/dl/
((Be sure to run it as administrator))


Let me know if any of those work or not.

I'll go into more detail when I've time today after work. My IE doesn't have a homepage, it was blank. I set it to bing just now though. 


I haven't downloaded any recent Windows Themes, but I did recently disable all visuals for my window theme in effort to conserve more RAM so I could do something while this happens. 

There's only 4 things running on startup, Alienware AlienFX ThermalControll InstallerLauncher and my gaming mouse software.


And I don't know if those programs will work, since I'm pretty sure it's not a virus but maybe a corrupted video or picture somewhere(I've deleted all pictures/ videos will unworking thumbnails and all recently downloaded videos and pictures since its started happening). If it's that, then I don't know why IE keeps popping up on startup since I don't... even use that. All my proccesses open up in their respected folder, and none of them in anything new or suspicious like a virus or any type of ware would. 

[SOC_Tessa]

Internet Explorer can't be fully uninstalled because it's a Windows "feature".

You can, however, disable it. To do that:
1) Type "windows features" into your start menu search box.
2) In the results, you should get an item called "Turn Windows features on or off".
3) Locate Internet Explorer in the Windows Features, uncheck it, click OK.

[The Red Mage]

I've tried that, but it still runs multiple instances of it every startup, and I can't get rid of them, because they automatically restartup.




i.imgur.com/DaBMkke.png



i.imgur.com/lsM0FMT.png

[The Red Mage]

Those are screenshots after immediately rebooting.

[SOC_Tessa]

Those "COM Surrogates" are stand-ins for another process running using them. It's a red flag to see so many of them at system boot, and looks indicative of malware:
malwaretips.com/blogs/dllhost-exe-32-com-surrogate-removal/

What is your total physical memory and what running processes are consuming it?

Check for something large and/or out of place:
Click "Show Processes for all Users" to see everything running (includes processes running under the SYSTEM account), order by Memory Usage descending, screen.

I'd say your best bet is what Hydaro and Valimar suggested - run a sweep of malware removal. I'd start with downloading Spybot Search & Destroy, updating the definitions and letting it do a full system scan (and if persists after that, there is a very heavy handed amount of steps you can run down in the above link to work through - I highly doubt you'd need to run them all, but go one by one and check each reboot to see).

[The Red Mage]

I've tried all the above programs and nothing. I'm beginning to think maybe my windows installer is corrupted.

[The Red Mage]

All the com surrogates under processes open in the correct folder and chrome -> svchost(which is mirrors an active service) -> explorer.exe are the top usages. I've disabled most of the start up processes to eliminate as much svchost bloat to conserve memory that I can. I've also eliminated all microsoft visuals to eliminate memory hog as well(window textures and such). I've managed to get my memory usages from 99% on startup to a constant 40-50%. But I can't eliminate the problem. 

I've tried deleting all recently saved videos and pictures and done a sweep for any corrupted thumbnails and the like as well. I've stopped windows picture previewer and windows media player to see if those were trying to render a broken image or video over and over, but it's not that. I've stopped and uninstalled any additional media player.

[Valimar Dragonbane]

Bust out the google-fu and search COM Surrogate and dllhost.  This really does sound like you've got malware, and not something wrong with your pc in general.  Can you do a restore point back to before this started up?  Make sure back up your data, of course.

Quick Edit: You may need to boot into safe mode in order to really get rid of this beast.  Again, try the four programs in the order listed.  Start with AdwCleaner in safe mode and go from there.

Hope that helps!

[The Red Mage]

I've been tackling this for around five days now. I've tried multiple searches and attempts as well as the five listed programs in this thread. I've tried restoring back, but that didn't work either. I've tried entering safe mode when I was uninstalling Internet Explorer(but it just kept reverting back to previous versions, and it is impossible to completely get rid of, so I just have it disabled).

[The Red Mage]

I did an SFC scan, and it said there were corrupted files, but it was unable to fix them. Joooy.

[Valimar Dragonbane]

Balls.  That's a lot of suck, man.

[The Red Mage]

I think I fixed it by updating my Adobe, Java, and installing the latest Window Updates. I also used a free version of Avast to remove all IE addons and do a little virus scan. It's all gone... for now!