Comment 36 for bug 762203

I was having the same issue on 11.04 with shut down and also suspend/hibernate. When shutting down everything would disappear except for my wallpaper and I would have to force a shutdown by holding the power button down. When hibernating/suspending the screen would go black but computer would not actually suspend/hibernate and I had no choice but to force a shutdown.

For me it was due to my Ralink RT3090 wireless adapter. I blacklisted the driver in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf and everything works fine now. Well except my wireless adapter obviously.