time.sleep(1) sometimes runs for 200 seconds under windows

[Peter Hansen]

Paul Probert wrote:
>    My app runs in a loop looking for changes in a database, and like a 
> good boy I call time.sleep(1) inside the loop. Unfortunately this 
> sometimes runs for 200 seconds or so, presumably while my OS is calling 
> Bill Gates to tell him what I've been doing. This happens under NT4, 
> W2k, and XP. What do people do to fix this? Thanks!

Are you saying that you believe the time.sleep(1) call is actually 
blocking for 200 seconds?  Or just that your loop (and we can only guess 
what it looks like) is the one taking that long?

If the former, try something like putting "print 'before'" and "print 
'after'" before and after the sleep, and observe what happens when you 
run the program.  I'm fairly confident in saying there's no chance 
you'll see the "before" sit for 200s before you see the "after" and that 
your problem lies elsewhere, not with time.sleep(1).

If the latter, um, obviously we can't help without more info.

-Peter