Macbook Pro Mountain Lion would not shut down

I'm having the same problems... Have they givin you a solution?

"when shutting down or restarting, I get a grey screen and it stays there indefinately, i have to do a hard reset."

I have the same problem on a 2009 iMac.

I have to do a hard shutdown (4 sec hold)

Try repairing your permissions. Go to applications then to the "other" folder then go to disk utility, on the left hand side you will see a white box. Select the second option, usually called "mac HD" with that selected click on "repair permissions" in the center towards the bottom of the screen. Wait for it to complete, then see if this fixes the issue.

Also,

PRAM:

i. Ensure the machine is powered off.

ii. Locate the following keys on your keyboard in preparation for Step 4:

‘command’ – ‘option’ – ‘P’ – ‘R’

iii. Press the ‘power on’ button.

iv. Immediately – and before the grey screen appears – hold down ‘command-option-P-R’ all together.

v. Keep them held down until you’ve heard the start-up chime twice. After you release them you should hear it again, and hopefully your Mac will boot up normally.

Finally,

Try booting to safe mode then simply restarting. (safe mode: hold shift key during entire startup of computer)

I tried all of those options CalebFromUtah and nodda - There are tonz of people with this problem. How do we fix it?

If you have already reinstalled the OS and my previous steps didn't work, unfortunetly the next steps would be to back up all of your data on an external HD, erase your computer and reinstall the OS. Then restore your info from your backup :/

Believe it or not, I would LOVE to do that! I just don't have the external hard drive space so I'll just have to wait it out. Thanks for the help