Sounds like JTA is attempting to do a recovery, which was probably caused by bringing the app server down in a non-clear manner (BSOD, for example). I can see where this would be CPU-heavy. You could try taking thread dumps to see what the threads are doing. You should also ask this question in the "JBoss Transactions" forum; if you are confident that your database is correct there are probably some files you could delete to prevent the recovery. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4095732#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...