Time Machine preparing WAY too many items

I just noticed that my Time Machine backups are taking an unusually long time. So when the last one finished, I immediately ran a second backup with Time Machine preferences open so I could watch the progress bar. It said it was “Preparing (about) 3,200 Items...” for a total of 660 KB. The backup took about 6 or 7 minutes. This now happens every time TM does a backup.
Obviously this is very wrong given that only a few seconds had passed between backups and nothing had changed. There should have been a handful of items to prepare, and the backup should have taken a few seconds. I installed TimeTracker, and it showed a few dozen items had been backed up. I made sure to open every folder/subfolder but found nothing that would account for 3,200 items.
Anyone have any idea what might be going on?

MacVal wrote:
When I reinstalled my software I didn't drag any of the old preference files back over either, just in case something was corrupted. And everything I installed software-wise has been running on 10.6.8 forever with no issues. The only exceptions were Apple Remote Desktop, which I did not reinstall this time, and a new generation of Plex media server I've been trying out, which I recently upgraded to from an older version.
In theory, a incompatible or faulty kernel extension could cause this, but it's highly doubtful.
I assume there is no way that any my documents could cause strange system behaviour?
Never say never, but highly unlikely.
At times both before and after this rebuild when I've been playing around with TM preferences (selecting the drive, setting which folders to exclude) my CPU will run very high (can't recall the % exactly) and my fans will kick into high gear. Obviously this is not normal, especially with nothing else running at the time. Something is clearly messing with TM.
Ah, yes, very suspicious.  I don't recall seeing this before.
Perhaps the preference file (where all that is kept) is damaged. Try a "full reset" of Time Machine, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting. 
If that doesn't help:
Are you running any 3rd-party disk/directory monitoring apps, such as the Directory Protection feature of Tech Tools?
Does that happen with other pages in System Preferences?
Does it happen in a different user account (if you don't have one, create one via System Prefs > Accounts).  You'll have to unlock the panel to make changes from a non-Admin account.
If none of that provides any light, a clue may be lurking in your logs.  See the tan box in OSX Log Files to locate your system.log, then the blue box to decipher it.  Use the technique in the Monitoring the log ... section to see if any messages appear while you're using the TM Prefs window.  If they do, copy and post them (or, if there are a lot of them, a reasonable portion) here.
Message was edited by: Pondini

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