15" powerbook won't restart or shut down

Hi All,
My PB 15" has a curious problem of not restarting or shutting down via the apple menu. I can restart and shutdown using sudo shutdown -r now through the terminal. If I try through the apple menu nothing happens - not even the desktop is unmounted. Similarly when I run a software update that requires shutdown/restart it does not do it when I press the button. It will ONLY shutdown and restart from the command line. I originally encountered this problem with Panther and was hoping an upgrade to Tiger might fix it, it has not. I am *pretty sure* that reinstalling the OS will fix it, but this is a pain in the neck!
any ideas appreciated!
Thanks.

Hi Dalton,
Welcome to discussions.
Have you tried to repair permissions ?
http://discussions.info.apple.com/webx?128@@.6893ed83
Also what happens if you use the power button to shut down ?
( hold it down for about 5 seconds ) Any periferals hooked up.. firewire, usb ?
Good Luck,
Robert.

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