NOLOCK Query Waits Forever

Back in the days of SQL 7.0 I used a lot of ODBC SELECT querying form VB applications, in which I implemented NOLOCK in order to prevent the primary business applications from being locked out of tables once the queries were run.

Now, quite a few years later, I'm busying myself converting a lot of old Access based forms and queries to TSQL on SQL-Server 2000, and wonder aimlessly why NOLOCK queries (simple select ones) are imensely slower than a standars select clause.


SELECT * FROM employees


This would be much much faster than the code below, but users would get "The current record could not be accessed, as it is being used by another user", evidently because I'm locking the record while producing the output.


SELECT * FROM employees (nolock)


So this could should - as I remember it - do a dirty read on table, not obstructing other users and give me a snapshot of date as they are, although they might be locked for edit.

Could anyone explain to me why the nOLOCK query fials to give me any output? It is as if the nolock request is waiting for the table/records to free? In which case I'll never be able to run a query.

Cheers in advance, Trin