ldsd timing out with any changes made

My LDSD console times out whenever I save or make any sort of change.  Seems to be happening fairly consistently lately.  This happens when I save changes in any module, activate / deactivate a process, changing window rules, etc.

v7.7.3, server 2008 r2 SP1 VM,  8 GB RAM, 2.67 GHz dual core

no reported issues from my DB admin on the sql side.

Any ideas of something I can look at or adjust to help this?

*** one more mention - this is on my Test platform, so both web & app running on the same server here.