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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220 additional answers

Anonymous

2014-02-28T11:53:36+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion, DonDuvallXO, but I just tried it and your solution doesn't work for me. I do hope it keeps working for you.

This weekend I'm going to try generating a log as per the earlier MS Support request. I guess I'm not a kid anymore - it's tough to find time to try these fixes and do their beta testing for them...
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Anonymous

2014-02-28T07:45:10+00:00

Okay... I was fooling around with this tonight and seem to have found a fix using the Deployment Imaging and Servicing Management tool. Checking the log, I saw that it found and repaired a corrupt .inf file... prncacla.inf. I checked it out on the web and it seems to be a pretty common corruption that causes different problems with the store and apps. And for me anyway, repairing it has fixed the Store Broker problem... at least so far. A lot of people complain that the file gets corrupted again... but it hasn't so far with me. I've rebooted- both with a complete restart and soft boot - and used the store to update and download apps. No problems. The Store Broker briefly starts and stops at boot but that's it.

Anyway.... from an elevated command prompt, run the following. You'll need to be connected to the internet.

Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

After that I ran sfc /scannow just for the heck of it and it came up clean.

Good luck! Let us know how it goes.
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Anonymous

2014-02-28T01:22:53+00:00

Same problem. Can ms please sort this out? So many people with same problem and no real solution. Are you all waiting for head office to issue a fix or is it a case of 'there is no problem'?
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Anonymous

2014-02-27T17:15:49+00:00

Same problem here. Hope we see an answer soon.
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