Why does Store Broker (wshost.exe) keep killing my CPU?

Anonymous

I've got a new Windows 8 machine and, for some reason, the Store Broker keeps pegging my CPU. It seems to pop up every time I do anything with the Windows Store (makes sense) or use some Metro apps (also makes sense). However, for some reason, this process takes up 33% of my CPU and never lets go of it once it starts. This causes the machine to get hot which causes the fan to come on and the combination drastically reduces my battery life (from 11hrs to 3).

Aside from frequently checking for and killing this app, is there anything else I can do about this? Is anyone else having this problem? Is it a misconfiguration on my end? I'm running this on a new Surface Pro 2.

Thanks!

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Anonymous

I SOLVED this. At least for myself. It's been a 3-day journey. Argh!

The upshot is this:

Kill Store and Store Broker from task list.

Rename the Cache folder to CacheOld at:

C:\Users(Your User Account)\AppData\Local\Packages\WinStore_cw5n1h2txyewy\LocalState

(Your WinStore_gobblygook might be a different bunch of gobbblygook)

Create an empty folder called Cache.

Solved! For me anyway.

Enjoy,

Ron

I have been at this for days. I've read every article and post everywhere. I have updated graphics drivers, set date and time, run wsreset, sfc /scannnow, created new user account (store did work for new account), app troubleshooter, etc, etc, etc...

Today I just started digging around and looking at dates. I don't have log files to back this up but I believe I broke Store with CCleaner. I'm not sure exactly when the Store broke so this is a best guess but it makes some sense since Ccleaner does clean Store cache.

I also recently installed Tor Browser but my gut is that that was totally unrelated.

I might create a sandbox user and try to break Store with Ccleaner to confirm. But honestly I am tired of this little adventure.

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Anonymous

2014-03-19T08:05:08+00:00

I used CCleaner too. Haven't checked yet to see if that broke it.
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Anonymous

2014-03-19T07:53:01+00:00

SOLVED!

Hey Ron, thanks man, you found the solution! Worked for me right away.

You mentioned maybe breaking the Store cache with CCleaner: I think I might have done the same thing. Could this be the common denominator among all of us? Any else used CCleaner to clear out old files and cache?

Microsoft, you need to offer this man a job . . . a very good paying job!
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Anonymous

2014-03-19T05:52:20+00:00

This worked for me as well.

I did it slightly differently. Instead of renaming Cache to CacheOld, I just deleted all the files in Cache.

However, I shouldn't say "just", because at first Windows would not allow me to delete one of the files. Instead, it would complain that the file name was too long.

There are various tools you can download to delete a file like this, but the easiest way to do it without downloading a special program is to map a drive letter directly to the folder containing the overly long file name.

So in my case I pressed Windows-E, clicked on Map Network Drive, and mapped drive letter Z: to \NP940X3G\Users\Chris\AppData\Local\Packages\winstore_ct5r8h2tyxwey\LocalState\Cache\0 where NP940X3G is the name of my computer.

Then I was able to go to drive Z, delete the problematic file, and disconnect drive Z.

The overly long file name looked like this, by the way:

0-SimilarApps-https∺∯∯next-services.apps.microsoft.com∯search∯6.3.9600-0∯776∯en-US_en-US∯c∯US∯cp∯xxxxxxxxx∯SimilarApps∯App∯xxxxxxxxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx∯pc∯0∯pt∯x64∯af∯0∯lf∯0.dat

I replaced some digits with xxxxx just in case there was some embedded personal info in there.

Problem solved!

Thanks Ron!
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Anonymous

2014-03-19T04:47:46+00:00

I SOLVED this. At least for myself. It's been a 3-day journey. Argh!

The upshot is this:

Kill Store and Store Broker from task list.

Rename the Cache folder to CacheOld at:

C:\Users(Your User Account)\AppData\Local\Packages\WinStore_cw5n1h2txyewy\LocalState

(Your WinStore_gobblygook might be a different bunch of gobbblygook)

Create an empty folder called Cache.

Solved! For me anyway.

Enjoy,

Ron

Hi Ron,

I did what you suggested and It worked.

Thanks.
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