Ubuntu slows down even after cpu-intensive process is ended

Posted by Matt2 on Ask Ubuntu See other posts from Ask Ubuntu or by Matt2
Published on 2012-05-31T20:34:14Z Indexed on 2012/05/31 22:51 UTC
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12.04

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64-bit

After a Skype video call, or the use of virtualbox, Ubuntu slows down to a crawl, even after the process is ended. Running htop reveals that processes that used little CPU before are now all using about 30% cpu (namely Compiz, Firefox, Python, and Skype, but I'm sure there are others), to the point where all my cores are at 99%. All I can do from here is restart.

Any idea why this is happpening? I'm running Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit on 3.7 GiB of memory, Intel® Core™ i3 CPU M 330 @ 2.13GHz × 4, VESA: M92 graphics driver. Not sure why I'm running VESA, I installed fglrx, but I suppose that's a different question.

Thanks in advance!

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