Another problem has cropped up with inserting to SQL (6.5).

I am running daily updates as a test (starting at Jan 1).
Most of the updates are approx 6,000 rows and they update at approx 1k rows per minute - fine. When the update suddenly jumped to 57k rows, everything started going extremely slow at approx 20k rows with a constantly appearing message "Executing Remote, press ESC to Cancel". I have automatic transactions disabled and asynchronous set on. I am issuing SQLCOMMIT() every 10k rows. The table has 636k rows at the time. I am inserting into a remote view.

One point I have noticed:-
The database is set to 800Mb with 200Mb transaction log in a separate device. The transaction log says 0 free and will not budge. The database says 579 free but the stats show only 58Mb used by the 636k rows?? When I issue truncate log, the database changes to 586 free??
Is there something I am missing here.

Will removing the clustered index have much effect - the clustered index is on date yet I am inserting one date at a time from Jan 1 onwards??

All suggestions will be greatly appreciated.