Taskmanager shows processes after application is closed ...

[Robert S. Clayton II]

In the last few weeks I have developed a disturbing problem with my
Windows XP SP2 system. Certain programs do not appear to be completely
closing after exiting the application. After closing a program, the
task manager still shows the program under the "Processes" tab, and
often these applications are consuming large amounts of CPU Time.

For example, When I open Outlook (I have Office XP Professional
installed) it starts WINWORD which is the default editor. When I close
Outlook and try to shut down, it tells me that Word is still open and to
close all Office applications before shutting down.

Also, after composing 1 email (with WinWord) the next email tells me
that winword canot be opened and it reverts to the default internal
editor in Outlook which will not display my stationary with an ActiveX
error.

Several other applications inclusing ThumbsPlus, Adobe Photoshop, and
AutoCAD2006 also do not shutdown in task manager after exiting the
application. This causes very slow performance and problems when
rtrying to reopen the application.

I consistently install security and other updates as they become available.

I have not been able to find any knowledgebase articles pertaining to
this type of problem, any help would be appreciated.

 

[BNR]

I've started noticing this, too. I went so far as to disable all my user
processes, except those to be obviously running and the slugish response
from WinXP still persists when openning and closing tasks. I found a memory
dump on my root, too. Someone's evesdropping me. So I disabled that, and
System Restore, from a friendly security expert. I noticed at castlecop
some ingenous virus runs as svchost.exe, which to me would be tough to
detect here in the task list, as WinXP on my box has four of these running..
none are under my user process. Seems odd to have two svchost.exe running
under System username. Why the repetitiveness? I'm worried someone has
infiltrated the wuauclt.exe and MSIMN.exe programs, too. Can't seem to
obviously get rid of them without a registry edit, however. So much for
Security Center... blah, just another gui!