Please help / advise / suggest
 

vB3.5.4
I am having a really strange problem that has only started happening yesterday and today.

For many fairly short but often-happening periods, my server seems to show hang-up problems, but the actual server is shown as being online, while my board goes down; then, posts and PM's made during those periods are often shown out of order, that is, a post will be displayed after a post actually made after it. Ditto with PM's.

A tracert done will sometimes show the server having hangup problems -- i.e. as slow as molasses -- during those periods, but not always; sometimes the server seems to be absolutely fine, just the board being all molassesy.

I have not installed any hacks within the last week, so it can't be that. I should add that users of the board get bounced -- the database no longer records them as being online till they successfully reload (using the database for this rather than the cookie option, but the limit is set at one hour).

Any ideas, suggestions, advice, please?