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
    2014-02-14T22:23:06+00:00

    Same problem here. Sony Vaio Flip 14. Hope we see an answer soon.

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-02-13T21:41:22+00:00

    I'm away from the windows pc, but its a dell xps 9000, early i7 intel  processor, 12 gigs of ram.  No games per say.  Middle of the road nvidia card.  Seventy some odd processes going on.  1-2% cpu.  Open the Store and watch storebroker and store peg my cpu.  It sounds like a jet taking off with the processor fan at max.  When I get to it I'll run Anannya's list.  Good luck everyone.  Oh yah, 8.1 and 7 each on there own hard drives with a third hard drive for continuous data backup.

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-02-13T20:06:28+00:00

    I'm on Acer 5742G came with win7 pre-installed installed win8 --> win8.1 update.

    As some mentioned when they boot-up its starts to occur but for me it doesn't occur at boot up.

    Only when I open store (like most people), browse a little (i.e. ~1min) a store broker (wshost.exe) pegs the CPU. Before it was ~30% but now after 'patch teusday' instead of fixing problems it had made it worse and it goes ~70% which is totally bad especially for some laptops that get heated up and shut down like mine.

    I did notice that if I close the process the store app doesn't hang and continues to function. I can even install a new app after terminating store broker but if I visit store again after sometime the process comes back.

    Very disappointing this issue isn't fixed still :/ hope 8.1.1 does fix it

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  4. Anonymous
    2014-02-13T17:41:16+00:00

    Ok done.

    1. sfc /scannow completed and says all okay
    2. booted with both safemode and safemode with network. In both cases the issue did not occur, but this is because I could not even access the store at all. When attempting to do so I received a message indicating that the Store can not be accessed when logged in with the built-in administrator account, even though I was NOT logged in with the built-in administrator account.
    3. Avast reports all clear.
    4. Had cleared the Store cache already before. Did it again anyway. Didn't help.

    Some details on my computer:

    This is a new Samsung Ativ NP940X3G laptop. Installed software includes:

    Office 2013, Avast, Dropbox, OwnCloud, Skype, Oracle 11, Firefox, Thunderbird, Chrome, some of Samsung software (though I uninstalled most of it), and various esoteric development tools.

    I'll include an image of Store Broker using excessive CPU in the background.

    I'm curious as to what brand computers and software other people having this problem are using?

    One thing I notice is that when I use the Windows Store, there is a section called "Samsung picks" which seems to be a Samsung customization to the Store. I just mention this on the off chance that this could have something to do with the issue.

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