In order track down what is causing the freezes..
The freeze has been tracked down already and I gave the steps to reproduce in my post
There might be several issues but one problem is the number of connected server you have, you don't even need to join channels, just get a lot of status windows to be connected, the number will vary from machine to machine of course but at some point mIRC will freeze every X seconds very consistently.
Note: users in this thread including me had 25, 11, 10, and 13 connected status windows, I'm certain it's the cause of the freeze, I do not know of anyone who can use mIRC after getting a certain number of status window to be connected, and that is with no SSL connection, no joined channels, with remote off, on a clean install, portable install, anything, as long as you have a certain number (depends on your machine) of connected status windows.
