Well, before making any permanent changes, I suggest testing it without modifying the configuration files. You may want to write these instructions down, as unless you've got another computer nearby you won't be able to look online while trying this.
By default, Ubuntu hides the grub menu - when you boot the computer, at some point you'll probably see something saying "Press Esc to see the menu". Press <Esc> at this point and you'll see the grub menu. There will be a list of possible kernels, and the top one is probably your default kernel. Make sure that one's highlighted using the up/down cursor keys, and press 'e' to edit the options. You'll then get a few lines of grub information. Find the one that begins "kernel /vmlinuz...", highlight it and press 'e' again to edit it. Hit <End> to skip to the end of the line, and add the text "apm=on" at the end (without quotes, and make sure that you put a space between it and the previous thing on the line). Once that's done, hit <Enter> to (temporarily) save the changes you've made, and then press 'b' to boot with the modified options.
The computer should now boot into Ubuntu as normal. Once it's booted up, try shutting it down and see if it shuts down properly. If not, post back here and we'll see if we can try some other things. If it does work, you can make the configuration change permanent. To do this, edit the grub configuration file, for example using the command 'kdesu kwrite /boot/grub/menu.lst'. Find the line that begins "# defoptions=..." and add 'apm=on' at the end. This will ensure that all kernel upgrade in future will get the option added to them. You then want to find the first kernel entry, further down in the file. Mine looks like this:
Code:
title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.20-16-generic
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-16-generic root=UUID=15c7524c-2da7-4204-923c-2f8a865f550c ro quiet splash vga=791
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.20-16-generic
savedefault
Just add the "apm=on" option to the end of the line that begins "kernel...". This adds the option to your default kernel.
If any of this isn't clear, say so and I'll try to explain further. Incidentally, apm stands for "Advanced Power Management", and in the past I've often had some luck with it on older AMD systems where ACPI didn't work properly or was disabled due to the age of the motherboard, which is why I suggest it now.
