Windows 10: Companionapp.exe

Hello everyone,

A short time ago, I was dealing with some iPhone issues and I was trying to fix it by working with iTunes. With one particular phone, a Windows app kept opening--"Companion", and iTunes couldn't see my iPhone. I got that fixed by removing the iPhone as a device and allowing Windows to find and install it again. However, when I look at my firewall settings, I see CompanionApp.exe is running and it seems to be connecting to a remote IP. I looked up the IP, and it is akamai. I don't really want an app doing that, especially one that I don't even use. To me, it is behaving like malware. Is there any way I can make it stop?

:)

 

What is Phone Companion?

Today I noticed that a task in task manager Phone Companion was was created is located in C:/ProgramFiles/WindowsApps/Microsoft.WindowsPhone_10.1607.1991.0_x64__8we

In task manager details there is an exe named CompanionApp.exe in properties it has that it is copyrighted by Microsoft Corporation it was created today

It would seem that an App named Phone Companion comes with Windows 10 which is the OS I use

So my question is, Is this just the process for the app something else?

By the the size of Phone Companion is 5.55 MB and 3.44 MB on Disk

And the size of the exe is 15.0 KB and 4 KB on disk

 

Windows 10 needs a lot of work

So I decided to start this discussions thinking that maybe some engineer of the Windows team will look at it and
maybe they will do something to fix Windows 10 several non-apparent issues.

Please note, this is done on a vanilla, fresh, up to date, untouched, uncluttered installation of Windows 10 Build 10.0.10240 RTM that has been up only for the time that has taken to install updates and drivers (that were installed from Windows Update).
Some other test were performed after I installed basic applications such as Office 2016 and, say, Mozilla Firefox.

Also, I'm using a known good computer, I tested a variety of operating systems on this, and none of them were buggy (except for VMware ESXi, that thing crashed 5 minutes after I booted it). I ran Memtest86+ 5.0, I ran prime95, I used default settings on
the firmware, My PSU is a healthy Corsair HX850 sending propper voltages to my parts, I'm using a watercooled AMD FX 8120 CPU @ 3.1 GHz (stock speed), Asus Sabertooth 990FX board, 8 GB Corsair vengeance 1866 kit (running at 1333), Asus Strix GTX970, A 512
GB Samsung SSD MZ7TE512HMHP-000L2 (it should be fine, I haven't used it that much), 2 Seagate 500 GB ST3500413ASJC49 and 2 Western Digital Caviar Blue 500 GB WD5000AAKX-001CA0 (all of them as a single dynamic stripped disk within Windows), an additional Realtek
PCI GBE Family network card and Qualcomm Atheros AR9485 Wireless network adapter. At this point in my testing I could easily rule out my computer as a failing point, as I verified that everything works as intended several times, as I mentioned it, with tests
of al kinds.

I might not post the exact error textually, because my computer is in spanish. I'll try to tell you the most out of the errors, such as codes, modules and anything that I can reliably translate.

First off, I want to start with the easy-to-note stuff...

When you turn on your computer, you might note that the network icon at the bottom-right corner of the screen might briefly show that there's no network or internet connection, and then it goes back to normal. What's probably happening here can be explained
by looking into the event viewer:

• The first thing that pops-up in the system log is an error that says that IP Auxiliary application cannot start because it's disabled or it has no associated devices to it. Hmm, weird...

Sometimes, when you click on Start, nothing will happen. I guess this one could also be explained by logs:

• I saw some error regarding Microsoft.Windows.ShellExperienceHost_10.0.10240.16384, saying that it took too long to suspend. That also happened with Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_1.4.8.152
• Another couple of errors appeared, saying that SearchUI.exe stopped interacting with Windows and was closed. There was no error number, It only says Application Hang, but in the Details tab this popped up:
  

0000: 55 00 6E 00 6B 00 6E 00 U.n.k.n.

0008: 6F 00 77 00 6E 00 00 00 o.w.n...

0010: 00 00 ..

• There was another error regarding Cortana, saying that "An specific startup session specified didn't exist". Event ID was 5973.

Just for the sake of testing, I tred to open the Windows Phone Companion App. Well, a blank window appeared, but then it crashed and closed.

• Again, Errors appeared in the event viewer:
  
  CompanionApp.exe, version: 1.0.0.0
  
  Module with errors: twinapi.appcore.dllException: 0xc000027b
  
  Displacement: 0x000000000006684f
  
  Process with errors identifier: 0x38c

I was updating Windows, and at the very end of the first wave of updates some didn't install (namely nvidia drivers) but then I tried them again, and it worked ok... Or so it seemed. I went to the Windows Store, to install an App. Well, updates for Windows
Apps showed up, but, they were all stuck at 0% (in fact, 13 hours have elapsed, and they still frozen as I'm writting this). BTW, my app didn't install, it stayed at queue along the app updates. Sometimes, when I checked for updates on Windows Update, it will
seach forever and never stop. I decided to restart the computer and then it (at least the Windows Update part) worked. The store was still frozen up.

• I opened the Windows Update Troubleshooter, and let it run. At the end It says that Windows Update components should be fixed. It says that it did it sucessfully, but The problems still there. I ran it a second time, and it says the exact same thing. As
  if it didn't fix anything at all, but thought it did.
  Is Windows Update broken Out-Of-The-Box?
  
• I did ran wsreset several times to no avail.
• I found a solution involving deleting or renaming some System folders, namely
  SoftwareDistribution, System32\catroot2, and Temp. Well, I had another Windows 10 install with the same errors as this one and tried, but I managed to corrupt the installation to the point in which LogonUI.exe crashes and the computer
  reboots. In fact, that's why this installation of Windows 10 is fresh.
  I damaged my old system beyond repair (I was running build 10.0.10547)
• I ran SFC and DISM a few times each. No errors were found.
• Events show several crashes like this:
  
  svchost.exe_wuauserv, version: 10.0.10240.16384
  
  Module with errors: wuaueng.dllException: 0xc0000005
  
  Displacement: 0x0000000000056f28
  
  Process with errors identifier: 0x154
• And also, several "information events" from Windows Error Reporting like this:
  
  WindowsUpdateFailure3
  
  P1: 10.0.10240.16384
  
  P2: 8024000b
  
  P3: 13A59E59-1055-4EB3-ABB2-F01E916FEDB4
  
  P4: Download
  
  P5: 1
  
  P6: 0
  
  P7: 0
  
  P8: WSAutoUpdate
  
  P9: {855E8A7C-ECB4-4CA3-B045-1DFA50104289}
  
  P10: 0

I started to personalize my start menu, positioning tiles, changing sizes, and noted that while I was doing that, all the small tiles got corrupted, and showed only half of the tile. I guess someone forgot to update a file or two related to positioning during
customization. Oh, and some icons disappeared. It was solved by doing a full restart, but this shouldn't happen in the first place. These errors are easy to trigger if you have a presentation desktop background that changes the accent color.

Speaking of the start menu, While I was opening the Event Viewer, it refused to open, saying that "the .lnk was invalid" or something like that. I can't quite remember. I tried a second time and it worked. Some kind of async thread lagging up? Also, if you
put a tile for Outlook 2016, the link will sometimes get corrupted, and point to a non-existing file. I have Excel and Word attached to my taskbar, so I haven't tried these extensively.

If I try to uninstall Apps from the start menu, sometimes it will take a few tries before the app is actually uninstalled. Again, I suspect some async thread not catching up.

Some boring travel through Event Vewer revealed more errors than I was expecting to see (Warning! some spanish text):

• Origin: Microsoft-Windows-CAPI2
  
  Event Id: 513
  
  Level: Error
  
  Description:
  
  Error on Encryption Services while processing object "System Writer" of the call OnIdentity().
  
  Details:
  
  AddLegacyDriverFiles: Unable to back up image of binary Protocolo de detección de nivel de vínculo de Microsoft.
  
  System Error:
  
  Access denied.
• A lot of DistributedCOM errors appeared (and keep on appearing):
  
  Origin: Microsoft-Windows-DistributedCOM
  
  Event Id: 10016
  
  Level: Error
  
  Description:
  
  The machine-default permission settings do not grant Local Activation permission for the COM Server application with CLSID {D63B10C5-BB46-4990-A94F-E40B9D520160} and APPID {9CA88EE3-ACB7-47C8-AFC4-AB702511C276}
  
  al usuario (several different users appear here) with SID (several SID's appear here) from address LocalHost (Using LRPC) running in the application container (Sometimes "Unavailable SID (Unavailable)" and others, various Windows apps appear here). This security
  permission can be modified using the Component Services administrative tool.
• One error regarding BITS appeared (with very scarce information):
  
  Error starting BITS Service. Error 0x8007045B
• More DCOM errors:
  
  The Server {A47979D2-C419-11D9-A5B4-001185AD2B89} didn't register with DCOM within required time.
• A weird DHCP error:
  
  The Dhcp service wasn't able to start as NT Authority\LocalService with configured password because of the following error:
  
  Request not compatible.
• And yet another:
  
  The DHCP client service wasn't able to start because of the following error:
  
  Can't start the service because an error in the login.

Keep in mind, this is a Fresh install of Windows 10, I just installed all the available updates (that my computer could install without errors) and then just installed Office 2016 and Firefox. I haven't installed anything else, nor I have tweaked anything.
I tried fixing the issues with SFC, DISM, wsreset, troubleshooters from Windows, chkdsk, reboots, deleting cache and temp folders everywhere (SoftwareDistribution, catroot2, Windows\temp, %temp%, %appdata%\packages\(that Windows store folder)\AC\*...),
reinstalling Windows (since I damaged my old installation beyond repair) and I can confirm that these issues also happened on other computers (I have an old (2009) Dell Optiplex 780 win an Intel Core 2 Duo E7500, 4 GB DDR3 1333 RAM) and the problems still
exists.

 

Can't you just change it in Inbound and/or Outbound rules ?

 

I could, but I don't see the need for this app to even be running at all when I am not even using it. I guess I should have made that my question...how to keep it from running in the first place. I don't want to use it with a phone, nor do I want it just randomly running in the background when there is no phone tethered to the laptop. When I first saw it, it seemed to want to give my iPhone access to photos on my laptop, which I have no need or desire to do.
I guess I just want this app to sit in a corner and do nothing unless I specifically call on it to do something. *Smile I didn't see anything within the app settings to do that.

 

Does it run as service ?

 

Hi. I researched this years ago. Akamai is used by Adobe as a torrent seeding service and download manager.
my contribution to fixing a major problem - General Chat

Adobe Akamai Download Manager FAQ

Not sure how to get rid of it though. There used to be instructions on the web, but that site is gone..

 

This may help:
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/w...d2725ed?auth=1

.

 

I've never used an Akamai download manager. My concern was with this CompanionApp.exe connecting to a remote IP in the background, and I really don't want this app running at all when I'm not using it. I didn't find it in "Services". It may come down to uninstalling it entirely, if it doesn't take with it some other files that other programs might need. I'll look into that some more. This probably wasn't the right subforum for me to post in. Sorry about that!

 

What is CompanionApp.exe?

 

It's Microsoft's "Phone Companion" app.