I always had a feeling that going to the process and using "End Process" was more effective than using "End Task" on the task list. Maybe this was a placebo?
I have so many memories of my old 98, ME and XP systems slowing to a crawl and struggling with simple things. I recently tried a beta version of Longhorn (Vista) in a VM and its weird lockups crashes gave me curious quantities of nostalgia. A sudden cold chill as I realise this is not my computer any more, it's the machine's.