"Ricardo Campos" corez23@linuxmail.org writes:

2. When I issue a Shutdown Now command from the shell, it shuts down

and I get a $BASH prompt.

What command are you issuing? I don't debug English very well. "shutdown -h now" should work, unless something is fried.

[...] How can I shut down (i.e. power off) the laptop without frying the HD every time, cos at some point I'm going to do some damage to the data. :( --

Emergency sync is AltGr-SysRq-s Emergency unmount is AltGr-SysRq-u