Laptops :: Shut down problem

Hi all,
This is my 2nd day with linux. I tried DSL on several computers (since yesterday), and I found it does not want to shut down on my notebook. It is a Gericom 1Ghz,256Mb,20Gb, and I use live CD.
When I select shut down or restart, it goes to the text screen, and writes the first line of text, and then nothing else happens. I know from other machines that more text should appear, like kill them all and so on, even it should give out the CD, but nothing happens.
The only way to get out from this that I found so far is the power button. Problem is: than the computer does not boot again from CD, have to start windows (hdd) to fix (whatever it fixes) and then I can use live CD again.
Dont know if this is serious or what...
DSL is so good, I hated stupid windows so much! Now I have this little pet, and play with it as much as I can!

You are probably gettng a error on shutdown that may be caused by one of the packages, like java for example, not unmounting. Try just hitting the Enter key to bypass it and continue the shutdown process. Then, later, you can try to determine what you installed that's causing the error.

Thanks for the answer, I tried the following: no myDSL than shut down. So only the live CD was loaded, but did not help.
The only line of text that came after leaving desktop is: cardmgr74 exiting. Than nothing else happens. I pushed keys randomly and together in many combinations, but no result!

Have you tried to kill the graphical interface (CTRL+ALT+backspace) and at the command line type "sudo halt"?

original here.