Are you seeing lots of COM Surrogate pop-up windows on any of your MOM servers (or any other servers or workstations for that matter)? Well, read on for an explanation of what's happening and what you can do about it.

First, some history:

The Component Object Model (COM) is a platform for developing software components developed by Microsoft and used on Windows operating systems.

COM Surrogate errors can occur when something unexpected happens when software uses in-process components outside the main process either on the same machine or on a remote server. The default DLL surrogate (Dllhost.exe) can act as a host for in-process components.

According to Microsoft, "The file Dllhost.exe is an executable component that you can run remotely and instruct to load any in-process component, providing the component with a surrogate parent process and security context."

How to fix the problem:

There are a number of possible solutions to this problem, and the right solution depends on what is actually causing the problem. Common sources of the problem are out-of-date video codecs or third-party applications. If you can't isolate the offending source, one thing you CAN do is treat the symptoms and prevent the annoying pop-up error windows that happen as a result of the unhandled condition.

Step-by-Step Instructions to treat the smptoms:

Right click on My Computer, and choose Properties. Click on Advanced, and then under Performance, click Settings. Select the "Data Execution Protection" tab, and then click "Turn on DEP for all programs and services except those I select". Click on the Add button, and then browse to C:\Windows\System32\dllhost.exe.

Click Open, and then OK. This will place the COM Surrogate (dllhost.exe) on the DEP exception list which should stop the pop-up windows that surface when the unhandled exception occurs.