all workflows get stuck on background items

[Sheldon Skidmore]

All,
 
We are running 4.5b and have started to see an odd behavior crop up on our
acceptance systems.  It appears that randomly all workflows on the system will
get stuck when trying to execute any background step.  When the issue is
happening, I have checked multiple workflows and many instances of the same
workflow, and all were stuck on some background step.
 
When checking SM58 I could see WF-BATCH entries backing up there, and SM50
showed a whole lot of 'waiting' processes.  This behavior will last for a few
hours (sometimes up to 5 or 6), but then all of the sudden all the stuck items
will continue processing like nothing happened.
 
Has anyone seen this before?
 
Thanks,
Sheldon Skidmore