Insert Transaction Blocking and Preventing Query

[gharabed]

This is driving my nuts! I am working in SQL Server 2000 by the way. I have a job that runs that does a large select insert into a table (lets call it A). This typically takes about 45 minutes. I have another job that queries table A but the only way I seem to be able to execute the query while the insert is ongoing is to use the NOLOCK hint. The problem with this is that I am performing dirty reads which I don't want to do. Isn't there some way in SQL Server for the query to only read the commited records in the table and skip the uncommitted records being inserted? I tried using the READPAST hint in the query but when I look, I can see that the insert transaction is blocking the query transaction. I thought that was the whole point of the READPAST hint. Can anybody help. I can't believe that you can't query a table for committed values while another connection/transaction is inserting records. Doesn't SQL Server do row or even page level locking?