Table crash - how to find the cause?

[Nick Nelson]

I'm having troubles with occasional table crashes.

The database uses MyISAM tables, for historical reasons that I can't remember. The MySQL version is 5.1.47, and it's running on Windows Server 2008.

The crash occurs on the most heavily used table, though I guess "heavily" is a relative term. It has about 100 "INSERT DELAYED"s per minute, and about a dozen "SELECT"s per minute, some of which are very complex and multi-table. The table crashes about 2-3 times per week.

Of course, it's not too hard to repair the table - but in the period between the crash and the repair, important data is lost.

I am a procedural programmer, not a declarative programmer, so I have limited experience in identifying MySQL problems.

Please could someone point me in the right direction for a method to identify what is causing the table crash?

Many thanks in advance.

Nick Nelson