> fascinating....
> so you are running classic everywhere?

yes

> I had assumed super server
> Do these databases, by any chance, have a lot of garbage?

no, virtually no data at all presently, bigest table has about 100 rows
This is currently a system being developed

> After this first connection which is slow (and may be doing garnage
> collection) finishes what it is doing, you can then connect OK on all
> subsequent connection eh.

the speed of the first connection is fine, it's just that any
additional attempts to connect hang until the first exits, then one of
the hanging one succeeds and so on

> Try doing a backup (without the -g switch if you are currently using it in
> your backups) of the source database before you copy it.

already tried, no effect

> Is there any chance that you are doing a mass delete on the source before
> copying? Or some other operation which would create large volumes of
> garbage?
> Alan

no, there just isn't enough data in the db for that