Reboot hangs at "Checking battery state"

[Chris G]

When I reboot my xubuntu 8.10 system it hangs at "Checking battery state".

To give a little more detail, I click on the "Quit" icon and X closes
down, I then get a text console showing the various shutdown events
and, about the fifth one is "Checking battery state" where it stops
for ever.

If I then hit CTRL/ALT/DEL I get a message saying "Stopping Gnome
display manager" and the system then reboots successfully.

This hasn't always happened, I think it's some update/upgrade of 8.10
that has started it doing it.

Are there any simple workarounds/fixes for this?

-- 
Chris Green