QUOTE(cnewhall @ Jan 30 2007, 07:33 PM)

Instead of taking out the battery to restart just try holding the power button until it shuts off. Don't be impatient either, the 10 seconds that it can sometimes take can seem like an eternity when your PSP just crashed.
try this ( i have not, but i makes a bagillion sense ) if you format your memstick on 3.03OE-C you will notice in your game folder there is a GAME303 folder, you can make this if it is not there, but your demos and other stuff that would require higher firmware, that way you dont have to switch your kernal every ten minutes and put all your homebrew (depending what your kernal is set to) in game or game150...your psp may be crashing if you have no-umd enabled in recovery mode, that has alot of compatibility issues so just use an UMD...hope that helps...
BTW:nyghtcrawler, i have had a few times were my psp wouldnt turn off and i had to take out the battery, tho it has only happened once or twice...he probably didnt have to take out the battery, but sometimes it will take more than five seconds to turn off, thats because it is shutting down...