Hi,

Thanks for the responses. Sadly there aren't any patterns, no signs of blocks, excessive server load etc.

I'm currently trying to go through the wait stats to figure out exactly what is happening, I'll let you know what I uncover.

Jack, I agree with you, cross server joins have in my experience been a source of problems, this is some legacy code that has popped up so I'm hoping that I get the chance to rewrite it and to make the whole thing more efficient, as it is now it's in a view which limits my options a little but I plan to change that.

Thanks,

Nic