Doing a shutdown -h or init 0 doesn't fully shut off a Gateway 9300 laptop. Haven't recompiled the kernel yet to see if it resolves this issue. 6.2 stock kernel worked fine.
I've had a similar problem with an Epox MVP3G5 motherboard. When I was running redhat 6.2 I had kernel 2.2.17 compiled from sources. When I shutdown, the system powered off. I upgraded to redhat 7.0 copied this exact same kernel into boot, ran lilo on it, etc. But, in Redhat 7.0, when it says system halted, it just sits there. It never powers down. This is the EXACT SAME kernel that shutdown perfectly in RedHat 6.2.
The "halt" command (and the equivalent, "shutdown -h"), only halts the kernel in newer versions of init (this did not work correctly before due to the complexity of the halt command signalling init to switch runlevels, and init then having to figure out which flags halt was run with). If you wish to have the machine power itself off, the command to use is "poweroff".