I just did today's software center updates for Ubuntu. On a required re-start, my computer is hanging at the shutdown screen that has "ubuntu" and the 5 dots underneat that change from white to orange. I've had this happen to me before in previous installations on older versions of Ubuntu, and when it has, I've been forced to do a hard shut down. This inevitably ends up corrupting some files and my OS either won't boot up correctly or I have sever sofware problems.

I haven't done the hard reset yet, and I am wondering if there's anything I can do to avoid doing the hard reset, and potentially saving my system from damage?