[header] How to stop vista showing the " com surrogate has stopped working " error [title] Understand what causes the error. [step] The " com surrogate has stopped working " error usually appears when you're looking through folders containing thumbnails for videos and images. The error is typically caused by codecs (software that processes video files) that aren't compatible with windows vista. 
The most common culprits are divx and nero. [substeps] There several quick fixes you can try to resolve the problem.