watchdog/0 process using all my CPU suddenly

Posted by jeffery_the_wind on Ask Ubuntu See other posts from Ask Ubuntu or by jeffery_the_wind
Published on 2012-05-10T10:10:49Z Indexed on 2012/06/09 16:47 UTC
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12.04

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cpu

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viruses

I have a fresh installation of Ubuntu 12.04, I have been running it for about a week. Suddenly today I noticed my computer freezes every 5 seconds. I restarted the computer and I still get this. I believe it is a process called watchdog/0 that is using all the resources. See the attached pictures.

How can I stop this? I can barely use my computer like this.

see CPU hits 100% when idle it is the watchdog process

UPDATE

Well I just did a cold reboot, (shutdown, unplug, and plug back in, and turn on) and it seems to have fixed it. After looking at the man page for watchdog, it seems that this process may stay on during a restart? so it is more like a soft restart? Why that happens I don't know.

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