Can't shut down / restart after Leopard upgrade - can't install updates

(While I found a topic with the same subject from last November, which is marked "answered", as far as my machine is concerned, nothing in that thread helps)
Having upgraded to Leopard, I have found that the regular shutdown process never works. I invariably get told that Firefox (or something else) is still running but not only is the "Force Quit" dialog empty, but a "ps aux" command does not list any process related to Firefox in it.
For the last few months, I've been doing shutdown -h now, the only mechanism that would work.
However, there's a new update which has a button to restart, but it WON"T restart. I just get the usual problems as above. If I do a shutdown -r now, I can reboot, but it looks like the software update did not actually happen, as I simply get prompted again to install/restart.
Anyone know how to really solve this problem?

Well, it turns out that I was wrong about the original thread not helping. As a last act of a desperate user, I went to the place in user accounts where the login items are specified and pulled out EVERYTHING except my microsoft keyboard/mouse drivers (don't laugh...the only thing I hate about Macs are their keyboards and mice) and my system is now working perfectly...shuts down properly every time, etc...the updater was able to do its job.
I have absolutely no idea which item caused the problem and I don't care.
It works!

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