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

[Claudio Grondi]

Claudio Grondi wrote:
> Paul Probert wrote:
> 
>> Peter Hansen wrote:
>>
>>> Are you saying that you believe the time.sleep(1) call is actually 
>>> blocking for 200 seconds?
> With such rare occurrence it is very hard to tell what is going on. 
> Usually I put such strange things on a list of curiosities I don't want 
> to know the reason of, because it is in my eyes not worth the effort. 
> Maybe it is even a common problem not yet detected by me, because I have 
> never run this kind of tests for such a long time.
> Starting today, I can tell you statistically not earlier than in one 
> week, if I have the same problem on my machines (currently I am running 
> only one or two at the same time).

Here the intermediate results on my Windows XP machine connected to the 
Internet via very fast digital phone line connection (network 
card/digital-converter box/phone-line):

dt= 1.125          time= 2006_02_24_11h_36m_15s
dt= 9.20200014114  time= 2006_02_24_12h_46m_49s
dt= 1.18799996376  time= 2006_02_24_14h_43m_32s

The code used:
"""
import time
while True:
   oldtime=time.time()
   time.sleep(1.0)
   newtime=time.time()
   dt=newtime-oldtime
   if dt > 1.1:
     print 'dt=',dt,' time=',time.strftime('%Y_%m_%d_%Hh_%Mm_%Ss')
"""
running in a command line console parallel to usual daily business on 
the computer.

The yesterday night run (5 hours) gave max. 1.125 sec., so I am 
surprized to see the 9 seconds already after only two hours today.

Claudio