ChromeOS users are reporting that a new series of updates which cause a Google Play Store service to use all of their CPUs is making their devices hot and leading to performance issues.

As reported by BleepingComputer, after upgrading their devices to ChromeOS version 85.0.4183.108 and later users have faced a number of issues including apps that are running erratically, devices getting hot, fans running at high speed and batteries draining much too quickly. The next stage in this would be a device catching fire. 

Upon investigating these problems further, users found that they were caused by the Google Play 'com.android.vending:download_service' utilising 95 to 100 percent of their devices CPU for an extended period.

This service is used to download new updates from the Google Play Store when they become available. However, a bug in the service causes the CPU to run at 100 percent power all of the time even when a new update is not available.

What is more surprising is that this update ever emerged from Google at all without a QA finding it.

The bug found in the Google Play store service does not affect all Chromebooks though users of Acer Chromebooks, the ASUS Chromebook Flip and Galaxy Chromebooks have reported experiencing problems after updating their devices.

Users have come up with their own ways to resolve this issue from killing the com.android.vending:download_service process in the Chrome Task Manager to rolling back to an older Google Play Store version.