So I was facing weird graphics drivers issues due to the default nouveau drivers that came installed with Ubuntu 10.10 hence I installed the latest nVidia graphics drivers & I the weird graphics issues stopped happening. So far so good, but when I tried to shut down the laptop it got stuck at the window with text

15, shutting down...
modem-manager: Caught signal 15, shutting down...
init: Disconnected from system us
init: dbus main process (1107) killed by TERM signal

And this happens .everytime.without.fail. I tried updating the kernel and any/all drivers through update manager but it stil happens. Not only this even the startup screen is totally screwed up. It just displays Ubuntu 10.10 in text with 3 dots. But that is acceptable. To power cycle down the laptop each and everytime for shutdown is not cool. Same goes for when I try to restart.

Interesting thing is if I try to shutdown the laptop when I am on the login screen it does so without any problems.

I googled & many people seem to face the same issue but I couldn't find any silver bullet hoping to find one here.