ExcelBanter - Long and Varing Worksheet Save Times

I have a 2.531 Meg Shared workbook which 3 people use.

To assure the user is working with the "latest" data
before editing a record, I save the worksheet to trigger
the workbook to Update Changes via VBA code. Everything
has been running fine, but lately the time to execute the
file save has been varing.

Testing with the exact same shared workbook and other
files on our LAN shows that it usually takes 3.6 to 3.9
seconds to open and save the file, but every now and then
it will take 20 to 28 seconds to save while the open event
takes its normal time of 3.6 to 3.9 seconds.

I have deleted all the .tmp and .emf files, made sure
Outlook's Journaling is off, and deleted all Internet
Offline Content. There is no protection or chart/picture
objects in the file. (Per David McRitchie and
decisionmodels.com)

We are all using the same Compaq computers with
Windows 2000 Pro Version 5 (5.0.2195 SR-4 Build 2195) and
Excel 2000 (9.0.3821 SR-1)

All other portions of the automation project take the same
time to execute (+/- 5%) throughout testing.

Any further ideas to try.