Spotlight constantly reindexing

Running 10.5.8, spotlight shows with a dot and when I click on it I get a bar with the message "Indexing Imac", and "About -2147483648 hours remaining". I tried disabling indexing from the command line (sudo mdutil -E /) but got the response
>   Error: unable to perform operation. (-1)
>     Indexing enabled.
Then I tried dragging the hard disk onto privacy and then off, as given in online instructions - the hard disk went in and disappeared so I was not able to select it - and it also is removed from Finder!
There are 2 mdworker processes, one owned by _spotlight and one by another user. Is this normal? Neither one is using much CPU, the machine is maybe a little slower than it used to be but not seriously slower as it would be if it were really doing anything. The machine has been running for 4 days, and has been rebooted several times since it started doing this. The other user is not signed on.
Thanks

Not normal... except I find Spotlight cantankerous , useless, & prone to problems.
Have you used Disk Utility to Verify/Repair all Drives & repared Permissions yet?
Open Console in Utiluities & see if any clues are going by.
In the meantime, I use hese two to get the job done with less headaches...
Find Any File...
http://apps.tempel.org/FindAnyFile/
I'd get EasyFind...
http://www.devon-technologies.com/download/
Near the bottom of the page.

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