This is the exact problem I am trying to avoid. Since everyone seems to agree that there is no easy 100% safe way to bypass the CPU scheduler, I will just double check right before I kill the PID (as danielcid recommends) and that should be enough. I am running on a winxp system and there is very little time between finding the PID and killing it. FYI: I use Win32::ToolHelp (to find by name) and Win32::Process (to kill by PID).

thanks, Kevin