7 responses
The answer certainly is to be a civilized human being and buy a Mac.
so far i'm using windows OS and din't get this problem...maybe your problem related with hardware
Use Sysinternals Process Explorer (or any of the many others) to troubleshoot Task Manager

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

I reboot the computer-- after switching to my Mac to finish up... yay.
downgrade to xp :)
No.. Don't use a mac. Use OSX.
I keep task manager up because a lot of progresses (with W7) like to just not die after I close the program. No lie. They'll stay in there for hours. So when the task manager dies? You can either reboot, or attempt to open a second copy and kill explorer.exe, then re-run explorer.exe -- it's mocking us.