Slow shutdown

I have a standard Macbook, it seems to take forever to shut down the desktop etc shuts down and it displays the wallpaper and the little spinning loading symbol.

Just wondered if there was any thing I could do about this? not sure what logs to check etc.

Im running 10.5.3

What kind of apps are you running when you shut down??

Even if i shut every thing down im using it still takes an age, this has only been the case since i reinstalled mac os. The only thing i could think causing it would be the drivers for my FW audio device? from m-audio. (fw410).