Since I have installed elementary OS, I have not experienced shutting down the PC. It's always a hard power off. When I try to shut down, I get stuck on the 'glowing e' ElementaryOS logo. Last night I tried to let it wait and slept over it. The next morning I'm still stuck on the logo (the same logo you see when you boot).
Am I in the right community to ask such questions? It seems that I have not gotten any answers from here as compared to the Ubuntu community...
There is a fix. But the fix is not worth your time. A force shut down will not harm the installation.
Actually it does affect the installation. The computer's state or settings revert to previous, so settings I've made before the hard reboot are not saved.