MySQL timing out on simple queries

[bauhsoj]

I have been working on a site for the past few of hours and everything has been running smoothly. About an hour ago every single page load suddenly started taking so long that most of them time out. I haven't changed anything with the queries or the database so I can't figure what is causing this. These queries are ridiculously simple and used to require upwards of 5 seconds to load the whole page at most.

When I look at MySQL in the Windows task manager I see that it isn't using much CPU power, nor is anything else. However, my hard drive light is going non-stop when I try to load a page and whenever the page times out it is always on a line of code fetching a query result from the database.

What could MySQL have suddenly started doing that even simple queries require vast amounts of hard drive usage?

[raf]

that is realy not enough information to let us help you.

[bauhsoj]

This happens on Windows XP SP2 with MySQL 5.0.18, PHP 5.1.2, and Apache 2.0.55.

Sadly these occurances also happen at random intervals and then spontaneously clear up at a random point.

[yonni]

This happens on Windows XP SP2 with MySQL 5.0.18, PHP 5.1.2, and Apache 2.0.55.

Sadly these occurances also happen at random intervals and then spontaneously clear up at a random point.

You sound like you speak from personal experience

[bauhsoj]

You sound like you speak from personal experience

I have had the productivity of whole work days go down the tube many times before due to this sort of thing happening repeatedly. :(

[arnyinc]

I'm grasping at straws, but it could be something seemingly unrelated. Perhaps a virus, spyware, or a p2p client hogging resources.

[bauhsoj]

I am suspecting that Windows is dipping into VM to supply MySQL with the memory it needs. I have 2 GB of RAM so I can't figure why that would be happening when I only have enough apps open to use at max half of the available RAM.