[OSX-Users] itunes weirdness and aps that won't die in force quit

[mc]

at home, i have itunes library on an external drive. and i use an airport
express to get the tunes to the hifi over wifi as it were.

of late however, itunes has been hanging - a lot - even on launch. and the
connection to the external speakers (really to the airport express) comes
detatched for no discernable reason.

it wouldn't boot. but not only that, on a force quit, it actually doesn't
quite quit. - it hangs around in the force quit box as non-responding. i've
trashed prefs/hard rebooted to address some of these issues, but the hang
can still happen.

Yesterday - it went into hang mode and i was busy doing other things and
only noticed it seemed to have healed itself when the music came back on.

are any of these sufficient cues to help identify what might be going on?

and have any of you experienced that with any aps? forcing them to quit and
having them still hang around in the force-quit box?

thanks
mc