Constant fans

Hey guys, I have a 13' white, early 2008 macbook. I upgraded to Snow Leopard right when it came out. Everything ran fine, and better, for a few weeks. At some point, things started going downhill. I didn't do anything special or wrong to make it do this (that I can think of), so I'm a little confused. My fans are ALWAYS on, and heavy. From the second I start up the computer to when it shuts down, the fans go in between moderate and full blast. Even when I have absolutely nothing running, they're blasting their heart out.
I've also noticed a large increase in startup/shut down times. I check activity monitor, and it has the process 'mds' taking up 99.8-99.9 percent of my cpu. I googled this and found out it was spotlight, and followed most of the suggestions to let it sit and finish indexing. I let it sit for a whole week, and the fans didn't stop once, and mds is still running at the same capacity.
Along with these, I have random freezes in a couple applications. iTunes will beach ball randomly for about 3-5 minutes. Usually when I have iTunes in the backround and select it to bring it to the front. It'll do it too when I try to change songs, or there will be a 30 second or so lag when I hit the buttons on the keyboard to change or pause a song.
I'm just a little confused, as I can't think of anything that started this. I went from watching my system and Safari start up with a snap to having both take forever to open.

You can try resetting some of the hardware involved (PRAM~NVRAM). See this Apple KB for details, etc.:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379
And/or sit tight for 10.6.2.

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    only about 13% is a peak ap. nothing major, nor a lot of stuff. but nothing consuming 30 40 or more percent or anything. Nothing running except safar in this case, activity monitor.nothingexcessive like 10 aps , whihc i have done in the past as we know the macs can handle it
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  • Powerbook 12 heat and constant fans

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