Hello all.
My computer has recently developed a problem that I haven't encountered before. Essentially when I start some programs/games (not specific examples, it seems to be mostly random which are affected) they will appear in the process list, using something small like 350k of resources, and the actual program will never open. Then, if I try to end this process with task manger the task manager itself will stop responding, with similar results if I try to open another task manager to close the previous one.

I'm running XP SP3, and I haven't made any major changes to my system recently other than adding a new sound card, which I can't really see effecting this. I've had this happen with a number of games running off Steam, as well as Itunes and Firefox. Other than that I'm not sure what other info to give on the problem, as I don't know where or from what it stems. Any input would be very much appreciated.

A new sound card does involve drivers that do dig deep into the Windows kernel. If the problem started right after installing the card, I would uninstall the card and drivers and see if the problem goes away.

Have you scanned for malware?
Any errors in Device Manager?