Server Load average- forum locked state

I am getting these "Server Busy" error all the while and the server load is showing around 7-9 these days. My board is open for guests and I see around 100+ users online at any time with just 5-10 members and the rest guests with few bots.

I tried to lock the forums by turning it off to see the effect, but still it s showing a very high server load average with the same users browsing te forums.

I need to find the reason behind such a thing and probably a good solution to optimize the server performance.

thanx in advance.

[Lynne]

Are you on a shared server or a dedicated server? If it's shared, those loads averages are for the whole server - all the sites on the server.