LMAO! I was on a business trip with some guy my age, fresh from getting his degree from some California college. Typical metro-type guy... had the SAME problem. I get a knock on my hotel door about a 1/2 hour after we get back from dinner and he goes "Dude, I can't shut my laptop off". Puzzled, I went with him to inspect the machine. I asked if he considered just pulling the battery, and he goes "Well, I guess I could just pull the battery, but I didn't want to turn it off like that". So I looked around the laptop and played with the 'shutdown' from the start menu, then I held the power button for 5 seconds and it shut down. My mistake was actually giving him the benefit of the doubt of being a little computer savvy to already try some of the things... That's when it hit him like a ton of bricks how stupid he must've looked. That, and probably because I told the office about it when I got back.