Whenever I shut down my FC6 box, the system hangs displaying the desktop preference background. I then have to power down and restart the system. The same happens whenever I try to log out the current user.

After installing FC6 with the "Desktop and Productivity" option, I installed:
kernel.i686 2.6.20-1.2962.fc6, replacing the original kernel.i586
vlc-0.8.6c-1.lvn6.i386 and libdvdcss
Thunderbird-1.5.0.12-1.fc6.i386
Gnomebaker-0.6.0-2.fc6.i386
kmod-nvidia-100.14.11 for the current kernel
beryl-gnome-0.2.0-1.fc6.i386
flash-plugin-9.0.31.0-1
rsnapshot-1.3.0 (Generic UNIX)

All this software runs fine, and packages are up-to-date.

I can't identify that one of these installations has caused my problem, but I recall that after installing FC6 originally, orderly shutdowns and reboots did occur.

Can anyone assist with fixing this?

TIA
Jon

just to eliminate a possibility, try to disable beryl and see if the problem persists

To eliminate another possible gremlin try taking the power management off. Phidor.

and would it shutdown properly if you issue
from the console? (as root or sudo)

Thanks for the suggestions - # shutdown -h now had been tried, but did not do its thing.

On further experimenting, it seems to be a problem with Desktop Effects. This had been previously enabled. In an attempt to disable it, System -> Preferences -> Desktop Effects and click button "Enable Desktop Effects" results in a desktop hang as previously described. There is no button to "Disable Desktop Effects".

When I manually power down and reboot, Desktop Effects are now disabled, and I no longer have the problem that I originally described - shutdowns, reboots and user logouts proceed as expected. Beryl now looks better than it did before... I'll experement more here, and update this thread.

Update.

On my FC6 install, the problem seems to be FC6's "Enable Desktop Effects". When enabled, shutdowns, reboots and logout current user fail with a hung background screen. When disabled, everything occurs as expected. It does not matter whether Beryl is running or not.

So, for me, disable "Desktop Effects" and run Beryl. Beryl looks great, and my original problem goes away. Is there a FC6 Desktop Effects issue at work here?

Regards,
Jon