Windows 7: Application services that won't end on App close

Hi guys!

I have had this strange problem for a few weeks now and so far I can't figure out a solution or why it happens.

When closing an application, the application's service (in the Windows Task Manager) doesn't end with the closing of the application like it should. This is happening with 85% of my applications and they are known apps like Cyberlink Player, Burning software, and others. The Software doesn't hang... it closes normally but it's process is still in the task manager. I can right click and end the process with no problem but it should be ending when I close the software. One program (Edius) won't even open another process without me first ending the first one from the Task Manager Window.

I have checked (with 3rd party software) what other threads these processes might be hooked to, preventing it's ending but all seems normal and there should be no reason that it shouldn't close.

Just a note... I have very good knowledge about computer maintenance (I am a moderator on another Windows 7 forum and solve many problems for many people) and it is very rare that I can't find solutions for almost any problem but this one is a mystery for me and others that I have asked.



Any ideas?

Go to Start and type in msconfig. Then go to Start Up and un check everything except mouse, keyboard, security. Then go to services and in the lower left put a check in Hide All Microsoft Services. Now un-check every thing except security. Reboot and see if that takes care of your problem. You are not stopping these things you are just telling them not to start at boot and run in the background. Those things start and stop when Windows 7 or you tell them to.

Thanks for the reply.

I don't want to be rude, but I need to establish something so this doesn't become a 10 page thread. Please bear with me and don't get offended. I appreciate your willingness to help and I am open to all advice. We just need to jump to more advanced solutions and skip basic ones.

What I want to establish is that I have been fixing computers for the past 20 years and I am a computer engineer programmer and build software. So you can understand that I am well familiar with startup services and processes (I program them myself!) so you can be sure that I have thoroughly checked this but to no avail.

Please understand that I am writing this out of respect for you and any other that might try to help, but what I'm saying is that we can skip things like "restart your computer", "do a sfc scan", "scan for malware", etc...

If this was happening with ONE software only, I would suspect that the issue would be with the software coding in that it's not releasing itself from RAM when it exits. But since it's with lots of programs (that I have used before - even on this computer) I suspect that it's something else that's keeping threads in RAM. I have tried uninstalling all software, codecs, updates, and more, that have been installed on the computer since the problem but it didn't help. I do not want to restore the computer to 3 months ago (although I can since I use 3rd party backup software and make a backup every 2 weeks and save up to 6 months of these).

This is not a simple problem and it really can only be solved if someone had experienced this before.

Again, thanks for your help and your time and please understand me.

From where I'm sitting I have no way of knowing your knowledge level in the computer world.
Have a nice day.

I mentioned it in the last part of my first post but thanks again.

I don't know WHY this solved the problem but it did... 95%.

All I did was align my SSD drive (which is my C drive... I never noticed it wasn't aligned.). Now 95% of the processes end when I exit their programs!