I have downgraded my blog back to 2.1, and tried to upgrade in smaller version steps. In other words from 2.1 to 2.2.3, from 2.2.3 to 2.3.1 and so. When I tried to upgrade from 2.3.1 to 2.5.1 the same problem occurred as previously mentioned, the system has an extremely long response time (~45 seconds).
I use PHP version 5.2.5 and MySql version 5.0.45 running on a FreeBSD server.
Can someone help?