Constant freezing, need help

[OM3GA]

Hey folks.

I'm having problems with OS X freezing on me for anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute (beach balls / pinwheels), then miraculously snapping back to. This used to happen maybe once or twice a week (if that), but now the 'mini freezes' happen nearly every 15 minutes or so. I'm not putting any unusual load on my Mac other than my usual activities. I really need help with solving this annoyance, but I don't know were to begin to diagnose this (moved to this platform a year ago).

Thanks!

Some extra details:
Mac: Macbook 5.1
OS: 10.6.4

PS: In writing this post (plus edit), the mini freeze hit three times :~|

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I had Activity Monitor open to see what was going on during one of theses events, and I didn't see anything significant...

 

[Giaguara]

So when it 'freezes' it beachballs and doesn't do anything for a while, but then gets the control back without having to restart?

Open Console (/Applications/Utilities) and keep it open. When you get the 'freeze', copy the texts that are generated while the freeze happens and paste them here.
Whatever is trying to do something should leave some traces in there - a process or application or whatever it is.
Console shows much more info about what is happening than Activity Monitor.

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

How much RAM is in the MacBook, how much free hard drive space is left, and how many programs (and what are they) do you typically have running simultaneously?

Do the freezes happen upon performing a specific action, like changing from one program to another, or do they happen at random times?