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

2014-02-17T21:25:10+00:00

For those who get it at every restart this is a fix, but it would be stupid enough to have win8(.1) without a store??? Whats the whole purpose of metro apps then :/

I personally don't get what the purpose of the metro apps is for anything other than tablets. I hate them. I've configured Win 8.1 (which my computer came with) to look as much like Win 7 as possible. The most annoying thing for me at this point is how search results still appear full screen instead of in a window. Been trying to find a workaround for that with no luck so far.

So, even though I had an app installed that was auto-killing the wshost.exe process, I've decided that disabling the Windows Store is actually the better option for me. I've had it disabled a few days now and don't miss it a bit.

The touch screen aspect of Win 8 is pretty cool, but that's about it. Otherwise I prefer Win 7 in every other way. Yeesh, I can't even rename my networks in Win 8 (easy to do in Win 7) without resorting to registry hacks. Ugh!

Still hope MS fixes this ASAP though. This bug is surely putting a lot of unnecessary wear on a lot of people's Win 8.1 computers, quite possibly damaging some. And from all the feedback here the ball definitely appears to be in MS's court as this is affecting many different brands of computers with the only common factor being Win 8.1.
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Anonymous

2014-02-17T20:03:45+00:00

I'm sorry Haaris, I failed to interpret your reply in the way you intended. Apologies! I am confident that a fix will be issued soon by Microsoft. Let's cross fingers :)
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Anonymous

2014-02-17T17:37:27+00:00

I am not saying ur fix is stupid at all. It is really useful and was (probably) mentioned earlier. What I'm saying is that why didn't Microsoft manage to recreate this problem and find a solution for it after all it is a result of some update. Like months back an update caused issues and a fix was published soon. I am sure i can remember it wasn't like this when 8.1 was released.
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Anonymous

2014-02-17T13:09:49+00:00

For those who get it at every restart this is a fix, but it would be stupid enough to have win8(.1) without a store??? Whats the whole purpose of metro apps then :/

As I mentioned, this is just a temporary fix until a Windows update fixes the issue definitely, since it can be reverted with a click and a reboot.

To answer your question, I would say that many people would be "stupid enough" to do try this solution for a while if it can prevent their laptop from becoming a hot pile of lava, as they are stuck with 8.1 and prefer functionality via the Classic desktop and apps over Metro Apps. Your choice. I made mine :)
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