Comment 23 for bug 552316

I have the same problem as listed in one of the reply and this is not something that repeats all the time
"On my system, selecting shut down, or restart from the menu has no effect"

The culprit in my case seems to be cause by the OOo quickstarter
every times the problem happens I exit the quickstarter and do the shutdown and it works just fine..
Hope this helps...