what is runtime broker, and why does it use so much memory?

Hi there!

Being that the issue is caused by memory leakage from faulty code, there is no reason to automatically suspect Anti-Virus but it is a good starting point, from there I would investigate non essential programs that run in the back ground. Such as Rainmeter or Steam Client Bootstrapper, kill these processes one by one and then once the memory drops back down to a reasonable level you can reopen the suspect program/process to definitively say whether or not it is that program causing the issue.

Pros: You may find the program causing the issue, and can inform the company that made the program about it

Cons: If you have had your computer for a long time, it might take a while to enumerate your programs and then cycle through turning them off and on again, also if it turns out that it is none of your already installed programs, it might be your OS which would be harder to fix.

Whilst I agree your sentiment, Microsoft need to take a close look at the Runtime Broker and make it more resilient to problems.  I have just upgraded to Windows 10 and my laptop has been boiling away at 100% CPU due to the Runtime Broker.  Switch it off and everything cools down for a while, and then hey presto, it starts up again.

The only app I appear to be running is Microsoft Edge, and I don't have any other apps which were not already included in teh upgrade, so I can't imagine the Runtime Broker has any problems with any of them.  It is just faulty software which needs to be fixed.

I disabled it on my old netbook, which was being driven to battery exhaustion by this program.

I have not noticed any side effects other than peace for my poor old netbook.

regedit

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\TimeBroker] "Start"=dword:00000004

4 is Disabled, 3 is Manual and 2 is Automatic startup.

The value was originally 3, I don't know what started it, certainly wasn't me.

its also using much more cpu

Thanks for the explanation of the DWORD coding.

I used this registry change and it finally stopped Runtime Broker from melting my laptop.

The program now sits at a nice low percentage of CPU and isn't intruding into the rest of the system.

However, the software still needs to be fixed and I find it appalling that it has existed since Windows 8 and has still not been corrected.

Come on Microsoft, respond to your customers and fix the problem!