Excel/VBA: Macro using COM hangs on large ranges

From a Lotus Notes application I need to import large amounts of data from Excel tables (ranges with 6 columns and up to 61,000 rows). Unfortunately, if I work on a range object, Excel hangs after excatly 10921 rows have been processed. If I work directly on a worksheet object, Excel hangs after 5461 rows have been processed (excatly the half).

Excel is Microsoft Excel 2002 (10.5815.4219) SP-2, German edition.
The OS is Microsoft Windows Millenium Edition, 4.900.3000, German edition.
The PC is a DELL Dimension 8200, Intel Pentium 4, 1800 MHz, 512 MB RAM.

It seems to be an OS related problem. A colleage tried the code on Windows/XP and it worked (not sure Excel was the same version). Another colleage tried the code on Windows/ME and had the same problem.

The following code (VBA macro) demonstrates the problem. It can be run from an Excel workbook.
You need a excel file, c:\testdata.xls, having range "A1:F30000" filled with data in Table1.

Sub Test()
    Dim xlApplication As Application
    Dim xlWorkbook As Workbook
    Dim xlWorksheet As Worksheet
    Dim xlRange As Range

    Dim strData1 As String
    Dim strData2 As String
    Dim strData3 As String
    Dim strData4 As String
    Dim strData5 As String
    Dim strData6 As String

    Dim i As Long

    Set xlApplication = CreateObject("Excel.Application")
    Set xlWorkbook = xlApplication.Workbooks.Open("c:\TestData.xls")
    Set xlWorksheet = xlWorkbook.Worksheets("Table1")
    Set xlRange = xlWorksheet.Range("A1:F30000")

    For i = 2 To xlRange.Rows.Count
        Debug.Print i
        ' hangs here at i = 10922
        strData1 = CStr(xlRange(i, 1).Value)
        strData2 = CStr(xlRange(i, 2).Value)
        strData3 = CStr(xlRange(i, 3).Value)
        strData4 = CStr(xlRange(i, 4).Value)
        strData5 = CStr(xlRange(i, 5).Value)
        strData6 = CStr(xlRange(i, 6).Value)
    Next
End Sub

Be warned, it will crash your system!

Peter