What would cause

[Sinster]

Programs not to run in windows but show up in Task Manager and won't shut down when you try to end task? That goes for shutting down Windows XP also. This just started to happen last night.

 

[Johnny]

reboot the pc ... sometimes dependencies cause that.

 

[fitz]

If you really want to go about killing processes, go pick up pskill from the pstools suite at sysinternals.com (specifically at http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/pskill.shtml)