"Sorry but you cannot use search at this time." Why not?

About 80 percent of the time when I try to refine a search on this discussion board I get this message. The interface just locks up, and the only way to continue is by viewing the board with another browser or waiting about 10 minutes.

Help anybody?

The bulletin board software that hosts the forum is rather fragile. If it gets hammered by lots of searches, it crashes. No one can access the forum, and that has happened several times. DEVONtechnologies then has to contact the company that runs bulletin boards for many others as well as DEVONtechnologies, and that company has to reset the SQL database, which temporarily shuts down searches for all bulletin boards. They get grumpy about that.

Sorry, but the pause for searching keeps the forum up and running.