Cant close laptop down - help please

I have a dell inspiron laptop and love it.
I tried to install a program called Skype that a friend recommended me to install.
The problem is the setup icon are down on the bottom bar at the end of the comp and when I click them to close them down, it won't let me close them.
I went into control panel and add/remove program and uninstalled the skype to get rid of it, that uninstalled but the two icons at the bottom of the screen won't go.
So when I go to the shut down the laptop it is not shutting down, is there any other method to shut it down?

I'm not sure what you mean that they are down at the bottom, do you mean in the taskbar? When you use the shutdown command does it not bring up a box asking if you want to shut down the setup program?

As a last resort if you press and hold the power button for 5-10 seconds the computer will normally power off. Not the recommended way to shut down but sometimes there is no alternative and it extremely rare that it will do any harm. Even if it does the most common negative side effect will be likely be a corrupted sector or two on the HD which is normally easily cured with Scandisk or Chkdisk.

What's your operating system? If you're running a recent version of Windows you should be able to "roll back" all your settings to a previous state (before you installed Skype).

Open Windows Help & Support (from the start button) and search for "system restore".

Thanks for your advice, I held the button down and thankfully they were gone when I turned the laptop back on.

I have an inspiron 9200. On a couple of occasions the damn thing has locked up on me completely and the only way to shut it down is to pop the battery out at the back.
Not recommended but worst case scenario you can do it.

In your case it sounds like the Skype uninstall wasn't responding. Just hold down the old reliable Ctrl-alt-del in these circumstances and end any programs that aren't responding....just for future reference.