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

Anonymous
2014-01-24T23:58:25+00:00

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!

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Performance and system failures

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Anonymous
2014-03-19T01:17:01+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

PS

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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  1. Anonymous
    2014-03-11T21:50:03+00:00

    Hi Madeni,

    I discovered that I have the same problem with Store Broker killing my CPU and the Windows Store don't working Monday night, after changing to the Daylight saving time. Everything was fine at least 4 days ago. Could this be related? I have seen that a lot of people reported that the problem with Store Broker can improve by changing time zones.

    Please, could you provide an update about what Microsoft is doing to solve this problem? So far, I have seen that nothing in this forum seems to work. I have tried some of them by myself, and it didn't work for me.

    Thanks,

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-03-10T08:28:43+00:00

    I got the problem too and solved it by changing the region of my computer. The problem now: The Store doesn't work anymore. If I want to open it i only get the green screen with the loading circle, so it's only a temporary solution, too.

    I don't understand why changing the reagion makes the store not working and solves the "store broker problem", because we got the same problem here from users in many different countries.

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-03-08T22:50:24+00:00

    I've been having the issue as well.  A few times scanning for malware would detect and fix vulnerabilities, but I think that those were unrelated since the issue would eventually return and sometimes a scan would not detect anything.  I did notice on two occasions that I would get a warning on google.com that it was receiving excessive traffic from my ip and required me to enter a captcha field to continue.  Both times this happened, I would find store broker at high utilization.  I'm wondering if store broker is triggering this and then 'stuck' trying to communicate with an uncooperative google that is requesting captcha input.  Perhaps this scenario is breaking store broker?  Or it's nothing.  But running a malware scan when this happened detected nothing.  So I'm not sure what else would have upset google.

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  4. Anonymous
    2014-03-07T21:11:17+00:00

    Hi all!

    I use Dell Venue 11 pro and after last update I have the same problem.

    For some time this problem can be fixed by disabling all notification features in Windows Store app and by  disabling Store Broker process.

    The problem will be present again only after first payment in Windows Store or after opening Windows Store app.

    I hope Microsoft programmers made a fix for this problem in short time.

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