Immortal process in Windows; no way to kill it

Question

I am writing a normal, innocent C++/Qt program in Windows 7/MinGW.

It is the second time in two days that after closing the program the executable remains among the active processes, and there is no way to kill it (I try both from the command line and from Windows Task Manager).

One inconvenience is that I cannot re-link my code, because the binary code cannot be overwritten, being running.

Answer 1

The reason is that the executable was running under the control of the debugger, and this protected the process against any attempt to kill it. Stopping it through the debugger has been successful.

I did not know that the debugger could shield a process from any external attempt to kill it so well...