Neither Ubuntu nor Kubuntu 8.10 will restart or shutdown as expected. Clicking on either of these commands will clear the screen and bring up the screen expected for restarts or shutdowns. But after that the system hangs. No further progress is made in completing these commands. The only thing one can do at that point is hold down the hardware power button until the system totally shuts down.

I never had this problem when running Ubuntu or Kubuntu 8.04.1. I have a dual booting system (based on an HP Pavilion media Center PC [m8120n]) which, until my recent clean install of 8.10, was happily running both Windows Vista and Ubuntu/Kubuntu. I have no problems restarting or shutting down the Windows side of my PC.

Any suggestions about how I might fix this problem will be appreciated.