Unusually long processing time for multiple inserts

[David Erwin]

I am using PHP and MySQL on WinXP running Apache to insert multiple paragraphs of text parsed from a large input field. After each primarily text insert, I insert an accompanying reference field into a reference table. The process completes in under a second for under ten records, but when I try to put in more, say... 12 paragraphs of text or one written page, apache hangs and I am forced to restart the process (which, itself, takes about 5 minutes to complete.) The problem seems to occur during the mysql insert process. Querying the database shows that a few records have been inserted properly but the last has been chopped off at a seemingly arbitrary point (ie in the middle of a word.) The remaining inserts are lost. This happens with straight alpha input, stripped of everything even resembling a special character, that is perhaps 2KB in size. Suspecting (weakly) that the PHP was delivering inserts faster than mysql can handle them, I tried closing then connecting the handler between each insert to no avail.

Does anyone know what could cause these problems or how I could go about tracing the problem?

Thanks,
Dave