Cannot restart, reboot, nor shutdown Ubuntu 11.04

Question

I cannot restart, reboot or shut-down my PC using Natty. Whenever I hit shut-down, restart or in terminal sudo reboot it shows a black screen. If I should press down the power button for while, it is forced off.

Answer 1

Ctrl+Alt+Backspace will kill the X-server and bring you back to the log-on screen. You should be able to dismiss the session there using the shut-down / log-off / restart button.

If that fails to render the satisfaction of shutting down the machine then Ctrl+Alt+F1 which puts you directly into the shell-propmt.

sudo shutdown -h now

or to reboot Ctrl+Alt+Del

Answer 2

A few things you should check:

Check if this works to reboot: sudo shutdown -r now

If it doesn't, copy the console output and paste here. It should give a hint of what's is wrong you your installation.

Answer 3

This is more likely a bug of some sort that is causing this, which it has been happening more on 11.10 rather than Natty but much discussion has been focused on this occurrence and there are numerous threads on this site concerning the problem. Below is a link to one of the more in-detail discussion on the following matter.

New computer hangs on shutdown/reboot, how to troubleshoot?

Answer 4

you could try pressing the power button for awhile.

or try the following key combo.

ctrl+alt then press the following keys in following order (while keeping hold of ctrl+alt) prtscn reisou

Answer 5

When you turn it back on go into Keyboard > Layouts > Options > Key Seqence to Kill X Server.

Answer 6

Have you recently install a dhcp server onto your computer? I have noticed a few, unable to shutdown or restart, problems directly after installation.