Shutting down to runlevel 1

Hi All, (Thanks for the suggestions for my wifi problems.) Anyone: Any suggestions about the new versions of Ubuntu and Mint crashing when trying to shift from multi-user mode down to single-user mode? (Note: Am NOT talking about booting into runlevel 1.) Systems consistently crash when I give any of these commands (in Ubuntu 14.04.1 and Mint 17)... init 1 telinit 1 shutdown now ... in spite of documentation saying I can do those very things. Am giving them AFTER logging out of any GUI session, and Ctrl-Alt-F1-ing into a REAL TTY CLI. Thanks again, Carl