Ubuntu 14.04 wont shutdown or reboot

Have Ubuntu 14.04 installed on a Toshiba Satellite S50 with Windows 7. Offnote: Was experiencing freezes with the proprietary nvidia driver so I switched to the Nouveau driver.

My ubuntu will not shut down or reboot. I try typing

sudo reboot -h -q now

among other variations as well as shutdown but I get other outcomes:

1. It closes x and freezes at the terminal with a _

2. It closes x and I get a terminal:

   wait-for-state stop/waiting
   * Stopping rsync daemon rsync
   saned disabled; edit /etc/default/saned
   * speech-dispacher disabled; edit /etc/default/speech-dispacher
   Stopping SpamAssassin Mail Filter Daemon: No /usr/bin/perl found running; none killed.
   spamd.
   ModemManager[828]: <info> ModemManager is shut down
   ModemManager[828]: <info> ModemManager (version 1.0.0) is starting...
   ModemManager[828]: <warn> Could not acquire the 'org.freedesktop.ModemManager1' service name
   ModemManager[828]: <info> ModemManager is shut down
   ModemManager[828]: <info> ModemManager (version 1.0.0) is starting...
   ModemManager[828]: <warn> Could not acquire the 'org.freedesktop.ModemManager1' service name
   ModemManager[828]: <info> ModemManager is shut down
   * Killing all remaining processes...
   * Will now switch to single-user mode
   

   root@laptop:~#

And I get a root prompt.

Side Notes: Using Gnome Desktop, lightdm

Why am I unable to shutdown or reboot?

For others with this problem, I was experiencing the same thing. I didn't even have to try this (which was my "okay, i'll deal with it this way" option).

After a Google search I found another solution, which is to go into /usr/share/dbus-1/system-services and rename the file org.freedesktop.ModemManager1.service to anything else. I called mine thisfilebreaksmycomputer.service. I had to sudo the mv command to do this.

Upon renaming I was able to successfully shut down and boot up without any issues!

Confirmed to be a bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/upstart/+bug/1174272 The solution using sudo shutdown -r 0 to reboot, and sudo shutdown -h now to shut down, worked around it. It seems to be getting some attention now.