It's surprising how annoying it is to know your computer can be shut off by software, to want it to be so, and not to get it that way. Granted it's a simple enough matter to reach over to the box and press the power button--but it feels like a little defeat every time, doesn't it? The damn thing just isn't working RIGHT!

I was really tickled the first time Linux turned my box off for me. I think it has not failed to every time since I got the APM set "on" in the BIOS. Wish it could be that simple for every user with this common problem.

Hehe, yeah, it wouldn't bother me so much, but I have to hold the power button down for 7 seconds for the machine to turn off

Well, and ... ?
Did you look into your BIOS-settings?
How was / is APM set?

It's nearly 24 hours since the suggestion was made, we are starving for news...

I can't find anything that says APM or Advanced Power Management in my BIOS... I did, however, find different settings related to power management but they were things like turn off hdd at certain temp. and things of that nature.

what kind of motherboard is it anyway? maybe that will shed some light on things (or darken it even more LOL)

incidentally, in your bios should be (well, in mine is) a setting where i can affect what happens when i hit the power switch, maybe you can change it so it turns of straight away, instead of having to hold it down ...

Why not look some more. I'll bet there are other settings in there somewhere. Some of my BIOS settings are in screwy places and you pretty much have to look through all the categories and see all the drop-down menus to find everything. But it can't hurt to look. It's a good idea to make notes about things you change, though--most BIOS'es probably have a "DEFAULT" reset function to go back to the factory settings if things really get messed up, but then all the other (good) changes would be lost and you'd have to start from scratch...

Actually, I have gone through every single menu and sub menu. The closest thing I found was Soft-Off by PWRBUTTON so I selected it, but the only options were Instant off, which it was already set to... and Delay 4-Sec, which I don't think will solve the problem, so I just left it be.

So its a ... what board?
You checked the manufacturer's webpage for an FAQ on this? You never know, you might get lucky.

Another thing most manufacturers offer is a copy of the motherboard manual, in PDF format for instance, fire it up and run a search for APM (lord knows i can't find it in either Soltek's or Gigabytes hard copy manual by skimming them. (both support it)

is apm loaded?
modprobe apm
lsmod -see if it's there

apm appears to be statically compiled into his kernel.

No, whansard, apm is not loaded... what now?

if apm is statically compiled, then it wouldn't show up
under the modules.

OIC, but it will be loaded either way right? If it isn't, then could that be causing the problem? I'm thinking that I should just reinstall linux cause when I had mandrake 8.1 on this machine it would power off. what do you think?

Whilst reinstallation is the best way to cure a windows problem (especially if you reinstall something other than windows), I've found perseverence usually get's you there in Linux.

Despite this, there are alternative options you might want to consider, such as getting the configuration of the mandrake 8.1 stock kernel for example. If it worked on the stock kernel, then, grab it. OR it might be an option to get the configuration of the kernel of the other system where it works... it might cure it (then again it might not) worst comes to worst you wasted half an hour (provided your system compiles the kernel in under 25 minutes :P )

so to get that configuration file:
copy / email / transfer / whatever /boot/config from the computer that does powerdown to the computer that doesn't powerdown.
the /home/<your user name> comes to mind.
start the make xconfig (or whichever way is best for you) and select the load config (bottom right) option, point it to where you put the config file
so if you copied it to /home/chakkerz tell it to use
/home/chakkerz/config

after it's compiled and installed, it just might powerdown. but like i said, it might not. 30minutes, vs 90minutes to reinstall linux and reset all settings ... might be worth while

edit:

Tal;k about missing the obvious ... though i'm not sure if it is obvious or all that useful, but i just found something never the less:

check out
man apmd
man apm
man xapm

Maybe that will help