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

2014-03-19T03:39:10+00:00

The one thing I've noticed that never failed to start Store Broker eating my cpu, was if I tried to manually update metro apps from the charms bar while in the Store. Reregistering the Store or WSReset would keep the Store Broker from starting for awhile... but attempting to update metro apps would always start it. I'm sure the same thing happens when it checks for updates itself.

That's not happening now... That's why I think we might have a winner here. :)
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Anonymous

2014-03-19T02:44:58+00:00

Giving this a try. Do you have any specific sequence for testing? It seems that the Store Broker spins up randomly. I could just wait for a few days and declare victory, but if there a specific login / logout / lock / etc.. to verify things, it would calm some anxiety.
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Anonymous

2014-03-19T02:27:00+00:00

Alright!! I think you may have found it, Ron! :)

I'd noticed when I used WSReset.exe that a lot of dat files in this folder weren't deleted because of illegal characters and file paths that were too long. A lot of it was old stuff from when I'd laid 8.1 on top of 8 (I've since done a refresh). I was reading something about people having trouble deleting these dat files a few days ago and wondered if it might have something to do with our Store Broker problem... but I got sidetracked and forgot about it.

Anyway... after renaming the folder and creating a new cache... so far, so good. Let's hope this is finally it.

Thanks!

Don
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Anonymous

2014-03-18T17:15:18+00:00

For me solved-new installation of Windows 8.1 and everything is OK!
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