Hello Froddle,

Installed vista ultimate edition and on shutdown it just sits there saying shutting down. If I start in safe mode it shuts down ok.
This does sound like a problem caused by a startup process/service as that is the only logical thing between a Safe Mode and Normal mode. There is always the possibility of some sort of a malware infection but Autoruns log file would clue us in on it if that was the case.

So, if this is still an issue, please download and run Autoruns following the instructions on this post. Then please attach its log file to your next post.

~TL