Macbook not shutting down

It seems that whenever I try to shut down my macbook there’s always a program that doesn’t quit and stops the computer from shutting down. Right now safari is keeping my mac from shutting down, and force quit does not seem to help. The menu bar and icons on the desktop disappear but dock stays there and then i get an error message. Any fixes??
Thanks all
edit:
Safari is quitting now. however now it is the finder that is preventing my macbook from shutting down. The icons and menu bar still disappear and the blue status light under the finder icon disappears but the macbook just sits there until the error message pops up saying that the finder could not quit. Relaunching the finder in force quit doesn’t seem to be working either.

Exactly the same thing happened to me! I tried to shut down and it just did nothing. Tried to shut down again, and got the message that shutdown had timed out because Safari was still running, and it suggested I shut down Safari first. I had just shut it down using the "x" in the upper left, but I figured sometimes that doesn't work. But the taskbar didn't indicate that Safari was on, so I tried the force quit menu selection, and it didn't list Safari.
Tried to shut down again and this time all the desktop icons and Finder went away, but the background pattern was still there. So I launched Finder again from the taskbar, and the fan started whirring like crazy. Went through this procedure a couple of times, and finally just shut it off with the shutdown switch.
I just had the topcase replaced because the keyboard had shorted out for some reason, and that apparently shorted the shutdown/start button so that the system would just shutdown for no reason. Now I've got the opposite problem! I'm hoping this time it's just a software issue.
By the way, due to the MacBook problems I bought a Windows system and am responding to this thread on that new computer. I really like Leopard most of the time, but am getting a little sick of this sort of thing.
Message was edited by: Freewheeling

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If you have an optical drive, make sure there is no disc in it.
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Macbook not shutting down

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