Constipated publisher (SQL 2005)

We have a 2005 Publisher that is publishing to one 2005 subscriber and two
2000 subscribers. It's been fine, but yesterday I had to import some data
into one of the tables that is being published.

The data isn't huge in terms of number of rows (less than 3,000) but each
record contains a lot of data. Since importing, the subscriptions for that
table are failing, claiming not to be able to query row metadata at the
subscribers. In addition the Publisher starts using more and more memory
(the replmerge process) and slows down until it's virtually unusable.

I'm guessing that perhaps a custom profile might be of use here, but I'm not
at all clear as to which aspects to alter. I'd be inclined to up the query
and keepalive timouts, but would altering the read and write batch sizes
down from 100 to, say, 5 help?

Many thanks.

Jim
--
http://www.ursaMinorBeta.co.uk
"When one of the local cats, an especially fluffy creature with a vast
tail, rushed down the street towards me the other day, mewing delightedly,
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