Can't access dashboard, connection times out (other pages work fine)

Question

I have a multisite Wordpress installation with 2 blogs, on different domains. One of them works fine, but I just realized that for the other, I can't access the admin area. I can log in, but when accessing /wp-admin the request never returns and eventually times out. It was working fine the last time I tried (a few weeks ago), and I didn't make any changes since then...

What could be causing this? How can I get more info to help diagnose the problem? I can't find any logs on the server...

EDIT: I was using Firefox when I saw this problem; I just tried again in Chrome, which seems to have a longer timeout, and the dashboard finally appeared. The other admin pages seem to work fine, but the dashboard takes a very, very long time to load.

BTW, I'm running Wordpress 3.3.2 on IIS.

Answer 1

OK, I just found the problem: I had more than 5000 spam comments (most of them from an IP range I had blacklisted). Apparently it's a problem for the dashboard, although the comments page works fine... I deleted those comments directly in the DB, and everything is back to normal. Now I just need to find a way to completely block the source IPs in IIS, otherwise I'll have the same problem in a few weeks...

Answer 2

So, I finally found a solution from my host. They didn't let me enter due to spamming issues. They in particular blocked the username "admin" because it was so common. An easy fix is to try changing to a different username through phpmyadmin. Otherwise ask your host. Haven't seen this solution placed anywhere else.