Not sure about your actual problem, but in the future, if you want the shutdown button to shut down, go to control panel (classic view), power options, go to the advanced settings for your power plan, and change the settings for the behavior of your shut down button.
Pic for guidance:
http://www.walkernews.net/wp-content...management.JPG
P.S: I found that incredibly annoying that the default was to put the OS to sleep. Microsoft must have realized how slow Vista was to boot compared to XP and used that as a way to conceal it.