As the title says: when I click Shutdown from the menu it logs off. When I click shutdown from the log-in menu it does nothing. I'm using a fresh install of Ubuntu 11.10. I can force it to shutdown by the command below, but I don't want to keep typing that whenever I want to shutdown my laptop. sudo shutdown -h now So it's probably processes which arn't closing. I'm a novice linux user, so I have no idea how to rule out the software causing this. I think it's either Gwibber/Empathy, perhaps Mozilla Thunderbird, because this is happening since I started using this. So a few questions: How do I rule out what software is causing this? How do I stop it from not closing on shutdown? If 1. and 2. don't work is it possible to add top command to the shutdown process? Edit: Rourke here. Somehow I cannot accept the below comment from mech-e as the solution. Thank you this was indeed the answer I was looking for!