How much ram do you have and is the server dedicated or you use it for something else? (winxp).
WinXP, desktop, 1Gb ram, 2x SATA disk, 2x IDE disk, mySQL database on SATA disk, import files on another SATA disk.
Also, do you have other scripts installed keeping you from upgrading mysql and php? threads runs fine on the latest of each I believe.
On the localhost I could do anything

php is 4.4, and this I wouldn't dare to upgrade to 5.0 but mysql could be ugpraded. We have InoDB databases and one database is MyISAM type.
But on server there are running 5 dynamic sites (mySQL databases) and 5+ static sites.
And import on server works fast. And that's the issue: i don't understand why on my local machine, import is so slow now. It used to be fast.
Could it be that some microsoft update is messing up mysql?