Search Problems – need help diagnosing

I am having the most BIZARRE problem. I have a blog using 2.7 and the search is hanging – but ONLY on words that begin with the letter “d” (I told you it’s strange). Here’s what I’ve done:
Done a COMPLETELY fresh, empty, install of both 2.7 and 2.6.5 and the problem still occurs.

I have other sites using both 2.7 or 2.6.5 and this doesn’t happen – so maybe it’s the server? But I don’t even know where to begin to try and pinpoint the problem or fix. The host provider will not help as they “don’t provide wordpress support”.

I looked at the error logs on the server and there is nothing that gets logged when you do this search.

I’d like to get an output of everything wordpress is doing when you run a search query… hoping that may help pinpoint why it’s freezing up.

Please help!!!