I'm a N00b. For some reason my computer will not shutdown when I tell it to. It will shutdown in the windows shell but while running litestep it doesn't.

Hmmm, that's odd. When I yank the plug out of the wall, my PC shuts down no matter what shell or OS I'm running. ;)

Seriously though, sometimes a module or application (usually one with a tray icon in my experience) doesn't die gracefully. If you could experiment with manually unloading or terminating various modules and tray apps and then attempting to shut down, you might isolate the culprit. It'd be easier to find a solution once that is known.

You know, I think I've actually had this problem some years ago. I.e. it was not possible to shut down the computer from the Shut down dialog, you would just be returned to LS once you selected something, and you had to kill LS to be able to shut down. Unfortunately I can't seem to remember what was causing it -- all I know is that the problem went away. Could have been a tray app like Boreas says. I'll let you know if I remember what it was.

yea i have this, luckily i have a keyboard button that shutsdown my pc, and does so quickly.

probably clockwork module.
if so, then disabling its 'ontop' setting should do the trick

Mine wouldn't shut down earlier today until I had closed the dialog mate app (dm2.exe) manually, using the tray icon context menu. After that, it went right down. I dunno why that happens sometimes. Some sort of system hook or something that isn't releasing?

Well it closes all of the applications and stuff running. It just hangs on the actual shutting down. After everything is closed it just sits at the desktop background and waits to be turned off.

it might the power management of windows\BIOS that is expecting a message from explorer.exe that its safe to shutdown. in windows, the desktop background is not among the things that are "put away" when windows shuts down the problem might be able to be solved within the system BOIS, were you can sometimes set a time out after the shutdown sequence has ben initiated; becuase the BIOS does take a part in it.it
could also be solved by changing to a older version of windows e.g. win.2000.

Open up the task manager and see what's still running; there may be an application that is hung that does not have a visible window or icon.