How can I kill a process (WinAmp) stuck on startup and not agreeing to die?

Question

I've just started WinAmp after a couple of months of not using it (I have the latest version you can get from not-their-website through winamp.com). Window comes up, but most panes are blank rectangles, and the UI won't respond. [x] ing at the top right corner doesn't work. Task Manager End Process - no effect. It doesn't show on the taskbar. If I wait for about, say, 1.5-3 minutes or so, it does die.

Why can this process (which is not privileged, or a system process, or what not) resist my attempts to kill it? How can I kill it immediately? (Sorry for the brutal and violent question...)

Answer 1

Run Process Hacker, select the Winamp process, make a right click and select "Terminator":

Here you can run several ways to terminate a process.

Answer 2

1. Some processes show in the Details pane of Task Manager that do not appear in the Processes pane.
2. MS/SysInternal's Process Explorer might provide you with more detail yet; if a process is balky, there's an option under the File menu to restart Process Explorer as Administrator.
3. You may need to kill the process tree (the process and any child process), easily done in Process Explorer. There is a thread on this, using the command line, at https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12528963/taskkill-f-doesnt-kill-a-process.