LinuxQuestions.org - Problems shutting down...

I have a version of Puppy called Minisys running on a HP laptop, and it will not shut the machine off. When it is told to shut down, it will appear to go through the normal shutdown procedure, all drive activity ceases, it just sits there with a blank screen. It does this whether I want it to reboot or actually shut down. It is running kernel 2.6.21.7. It also will not save the configuration of the system, and I believe this to be because it does not shut down properly, otherwise it would not be an issue, I could just use the power button. I have tried changing the acpi= option to force, on, and off from the bootloader, but they all act the same way. Any insight would be appreciated.