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I recently upgraded from ubuntu 11.10 to 12.04. If it makes any difference, My system is a dell inspiron 1520. I encounter a problem whenever i shutdown or restart. It kills all running processes (as far as i can tell), but once I get past the shutdown text screen and the screen goes black, my computer doesn't power off. The fans still run and the screen is still on, etc. I have to hold down the power button in order to complety shut down. Does anyone else have this problem? Help would be apreciated.

Thanks

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Ok, just to make sure, you are shutting down by clicking the right corner button and pressing shutdown right? – eltommo Apr 27 '12 at 4:38
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yes. That is right – Justin H Apr 27 '12 at 4:39
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ok, while you are looking for a solution to this problem, you should be able to work around it by typing sudo poweroff at a terminal prompt, or if you are unfamiliar with the terminal press "alt-f2" and type "gksudo poweroff" and that may bring your computer to a complete power off. – eltommo Apr 27 '12 at 4:42
It looks like there is a bug for that: bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/987220 . If you are affected, click on "yes, it affects me too" at the top of the page. This will be counted. You can log on to Launchpad with your UbuntuOne ID. – Andre May 19 '12 at 17:28

3 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

It is a bug. Ref - https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/987933

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or this one... bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/987220 – Andre May 19 '12 at 17:30
Both issues were closed as invalid. Where is the real bug report? – Gili Oct 10 '12 at 16:30
up vote 14 down vote

I have the same problem and found a solution which worked out for me.

Type in terminal:
1. sudo gedit /etc/default/grub
2. Find the line: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
3. Change this to: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi=force"
4. Save the file and close the file. 5. Finally, in terminal: sudo update-grub

I found it here: Dell Studio 1569 Cannot Shutdown in Ubuntu 11.10 or 12.04

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This does not appear to work either. – CMC Aug 1 '12 at 18:57
this seemed to work for me, on my Dell XPS M1330 with an Nvidia 8400M – foh1981 Aug 11 '12 at 23:41
Works for me. Dell XPS M1530 Nvidia 8600 – Garfield Oct 2 '12 at 1:59
The solution above worked for a while but then the problem re-occurred. So I removed acpi=force from GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT and added it to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX instead, using the steps above (i.e. GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="acpi=force"). Then I shut down the computer, using the power button to power off after it stopped shutting down at the black screen with a series of messages that ended with "[end trance ...]" as it did before (I had GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="" to show messages instead of the splash screen). After re-booting, shutdown worked correctly (I tested it several times). – Cee Oct 28 '12 at 2:44
The problem re-occured after another update with Update Manager. As before, the screensaver also froze (even with just blank screen & 2d screensavers) when trying to return to using the computer after a while. And again there was also freezing at the screensaver instead of automatic shutdown of the computer by Power Management. Shutdown works properly again after following the steps above (moving acpi=force to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT this time) shutting down and manually powering off. So you may have to repeat these steps each time the problem reoccurs, seemingly after system updates. – Cee Nov 11 '12 at 0:40
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up vote 0 down vote

I have the same problem on exactly the same model (Inspiron 1520). The culprit seems to be the proprietary NVIDIA graphics driver. If you uninstall it and fallback to Nouveau it will work as usual.

To run Nouveau instead of the NVIDIA driver you just remove/inactivate [both] NVIDIA drivers in "additional drivers" (not running English system so I can't be sure of the name). Ubuntu will then use Nouveau automatically.

Depending on your usage though, Nouveau might not be "good enough". But in my case I don't need the performance of the NVIDIA driver (no gaming here!).

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