Classic won't quit except by force; any suggestions?

Greetings!

I am running OS X 10.3.4 on a G4/867 Quicksilver Mac with 1 GB of RAM.
Generally works pretty well. However, I use Classic a lot (mainly for MS
Word 5.1a), and lately I've noticed that Classic almost never quits when
asked. Instead, it hangs while quitting, and I eventually have to force
quit it.

Are there any well-known culprits for this problem, anything to look at
first? I'm not really sure how to diagnose Classic problems. If I had an
OS 9 machine that wouldn't shut down, I'd at least try running
Diskwarrior, Norton, Tech Tool Pro, and see if any of them turn up and
fix a problem. But there isn't any equivalent to this for Classic, is
there? Perhaps the thing to do is to do a fresh install from a 9.2.1 CD
and upgrade, winnow the Classic folder to eliminate unnecessary things,
and finally make a copy of the completely pure System Folder and stash
it somewhere. Wish I had done that earlier!

George Fowler
gfowler AT indiana DOT edu