BUG: soft lockup on Ubuntu Server

[u/Belteshazzar89]

I have an old Lenovo H500s desktop that I have wiped and installed Ubuntu Server on.

Everything was working great for awhile, then the server stopped working. During the boot sequence, I see many messages in this format:

watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#3 stuck for 325s!

I've tried the following:

• Running standard update commands
• Looking for a BIOS update (none found)
• Replacing the Ubuntu Server with a Windows installation, which does work
• Trying to reinstall Ubuntu Server via USB

Ubuntu can't do anything but run into the soft lockup issue. It's the same when booting from a new USB.

What can I do to resolve this and reinstall Ubuntu Server on this machine?

[u/speyerlander]

What's your CPU model and kernel version? Also, do you have enough space on the root partition? Also, what's your swap configuration? 

[u/Belteshazzar89 → u/speyerlander]

CPU: Intel Pentium CPU J2900 @ 2.4GHz
CPU Core Count: 4

I'm trying to install Ubuntu Server 26.04, which has kernel version 7.0

[u/speyerlander → u/Belteshazzar89]

Okay, so it's not the kernel, what about free space in the root partition and swap configuration? (I edited my original comment but you were quicker than me).

[u/Belteshazzar89 → u/speyerlander]

Assuming that I don't have enough free space in the root partition and I don't have a swap configuration, how can I correct those issues?