froze, took ages to force quit and is now stuck during reboot

Hi guys,

Sorry if I get something wrong here, I'm new both to Mac and to forums like these. I downloaded and installed some widgets linked from the apple website and my MacBook Pro completely froze and took nearly 2 hours to force quit everything that was running and restart. It then installed some updates and is now stuck on the background screen without finishing the restart. It has been like that for nearly another 2 hours now. It had the portable harddrive connected when it restarted, and I've disconnected that about half an hour ago but no result. I haven't been game to try holding the power button in case doing that in the middle of a restart harms my computer.

Any ideas? Thanks so much for your help!

Holding down the button will not harm your computer. Try this for starters:
Disconnect power and battery. Hold down power button for 5 seconds. Put battery back and power if necessary. Boot in Safe Mode (holding left Shift Key during startup immediately after the chime) and once in, try and remove those widgets, which seem to have broken Dashboard for you. Reboot and see. :0

Thanks so much!!

I did that and it seems to be working ok now. Again, thanks heaps for your help, much appreciated