VERCLSID.EXE

A recent Microsoft security update is causing problems on desktops. The desktops seem to freeze or hang when users click on My Recent Documents or My Computer or just using Explorer. The olny way to stop the process is to end the task using task mananger. There may even be multiple instances of the program running.

The verclsid.exe is a binary that was added to the system32 folder. It's supposed to check the DCOM class id of the executed or initiated program. This has a known problem. A work around that I used this morning was to rename the file:

• Start a command prompt
• go to the system32 directory
• type in ren verclsid.exe verclsid.old

The new binary doesn't prevent remote access to the system so using online remote desktop control software over the web to connect to the affected system should in most cases still be a viable method to get access to the system to fix.

The microsoft security update is MS06-015 (908531). More information on the verclsid.exe can be found at Microsoft's site.