Spinning beach ball of doom when I shut Down

[Ollie N]

My dad has a black macbook with an intel processor, 2.0 Gigahertz processor and 2 GB of RAM. When he tries to shutdown he gets the spinning beach of doom. What should we try to fix it?

 

[NewMacbookPlz]

1) Check for hanging programs/processes before shutdown/during normal operation in the activity monitor.
2) Repair permissions.