Mine work fine. I am in Kubuntu now. You can always kill the session with
Right-Alt + Sys-Req + K. Have you done all of the updates?

I just thought that since i upgraded, all will be updated at the same time.

I changed the repo' source to main server and did a sudo apt-get update and new
updates came up. updated and tried shutting down my pc and works like magic.

the karmic upgrade is really cool. i appreciate how the font were resized and
the taskbar trimmed. i haven't much time to check things out but below are the
things i've noticed so far.

- the sources i added previously were disabled. wondering if i need to enable
them again or need to put in an updated source link. (nvidia, compiz, wine....)

- boot time increased by around 12 seconds and the shell login prompt shows up
before the GUI prompt.

- shutting down time is a lot quicker than before.

by the way my kubuntu is installed in a 20GB partition of a 250GB Western
digital removable drive. pc is a Compaq Presario CQ60-116EE

On this issue, I originally did an upgrade from 9.04 and did not have that
problem. But my usual habit is to do a fresh installation a week or so after
release which I did yesterday. I experienced your problem. The button did
not work. I deleted it and re-added it and the new one worked. It looks
different as well. Instead of one button there are two, one for logging out
and one for shutting down.

I am glad your problem is straightened out.