Power Button and Ctrl-Atl-Delete Problem(s)

There is a tutorial on this. Maybe one of the others, familiar with your problem, will point the tutorial out.

It appears I have found the crux of my problem so succinctly described by the title of the webpage I came across: How to fix a corrupted user profile.

The following page has a pretty good step-by-step instruction as to how to fix the issue: Fix a corrupted user profile
Here's hoping I don't screw something up...but will back up the original user file to make extra sure.

Okay...after transferring everything over to a new user account, I am now able to "shut down", "restart", and "sleep"...so creating a new user account worked, but it did take some work. I created my "new" user account plus a "temp" user account so that I could log in under the "temp" account to transfer all the files over from the old account to the new one. For those who do have to go through this, note that you only want to transfer *some* of the folders in the AppData folder. Transfer the ones only in association with non-Microsoft programs. Basically, look at the folders (that reside in the new AppData\Local folder) in your new user account. When you transfer from the old account to the new one, make sure you do not replace or overwrite any existing folders in the new AppData\Local location. Other than that folder, the rest of them (documents, music, pictures, etc.) can be copied completely without a single problem. Hope this helps someone else in the future!