COM Surrogate prevents update installation

[EPD]

Hello!
For several releases (I don't know when it started) I am unable to perform updateinstallations for Sandboxie.

I get a message that "COM Surrogate" can not be stopped. Retrying to stop does not change it, ignoring results in several files msvcp140*.dll being in use and thus inaccesible.

I tried to uninstall Sandboxie, which takes rather long but finishes successfull. Once without removing config files and sandboxes, ones with removing everything.
The following new installation works without any problems, but the next update causes the same problem.

Thanks for help!

 

[bastik-1001]

Hello,

there is a thread that covers this issue. So far, this is a problem that affects only some users. I understood a change within Sandboxie Plus 1.16.9 (and Sandboxie Classic) to be addressing this issue, so that updates after this version hopefully don't show this problem.

 

[EPD]

Hi!
Thanks for your helpful reply. For some reason I did not find that thread by searching COM Surrogate…
Indeed the problem first occured somewhere in the 1.16-branch and still occurees for me while updating from .8 to .9. But if I get it correctly the fix will only be visible for the next update after .9!? I will report back then.
The interesting thing is, that on two nearly identical setups one is affected, the other one not. What is/was the reason for that problem?
Thanks again!

 

[bastik-1001]

For some reason I did not find that thread by searching COM Surrogate…

The word "COM" appears to be filtered by the search.

I will report back then

Thank you for your feedback.

The interesting thing is, that on two nearly identical setups one is affected, the other one not.

It's interesting that this happens only on some machines.

What is/was the reason for that problem?

Sandboxie (some parts of if) opens COM processes (those are Window processes) and for some reason it did not (or could not) close them (or one of it), even when it was being updated. The update then fails, as the installer can't replace Sandboxie. The "COM Surrogate" can be lots of process, like WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation), so it is not directly obvious which process is causing this.