Missing characters when processing scripts

I have a semi -random problem that characters in the php script are dropped. A very noticible instance is in a statement like: $query = "SELECT junk FROM table"; $result = mysql_query( $query, $handle) or die (mysql_error()); I get an error message from the die function like: "Error .... SELECT jnk FROM table... As you can see the error message has the SELECT statement with one character dropped (this is much more rare than single quotes or semicolons being dropped - but it definitely shows that the error isn't in the code). If I wait a minute and do a browser refresh, the error goes away and either there is another character dropped or it works. This problem was noticed in January a month after we upgraded PHP on our server to 4.3.10. Thanks in advance Charlene