Multiple processes of closed program [Outlook] still running

I think I will try to do a repair install of MSO.  And thanks, I thought svchost was an ok thing to have there, but just thought I'd check.  I'll repost after the reinstall.

Also make sure it's not running at startup.  So on a clean reboot, before opening anything manually, make sure you don't already have an outlook.exe in there.  I'd suspect you wouldn't but it's worth a check.

Actually, I've checked that already.  It doesn't run at startup.  I really wouldn't care if it did, as long as it didn't run 2 or more times at the same time!  Something I didn't mention previously; there are times when OL is not on my taskbar, but when I try to start it, nothing visible happens.  Then I go to the Task Manager and sure enough, there are already 2 or more instances in the processes list.  Close them all and then I can start OL without a problem.
I'm wondering, should I have posted this in the Applications:MSOffice section?  I'm not sure if it's an Office/Outlook issue or a WindowsXP issue.

And to answer your question, posting in the MSOffice TA may have helped, although it is probably too late to close this one here, as experts have already provided valuable information.

I have seen other experts post links/pointers to questions in other TA's... for instance post a 25-pointer question that says hey here is my problem, please post in this question [link].  Not sure what EE thinks about this, but I don't see why it would be a problem.  

Unfortunately, this has A)been happening for a few months and B)only my most recent few weeks of System Restore points are still available.  I had to delete a lot of the early ones a few weeks ago when I my virus scanner caught a virus and then after cleaning it was found in an earlier restore point.  All the advice I could find on deleting restore points indicated that I could either delete all of them or all but the last few- I did the latter.  I have a feeling that jonny is right about some buggy apps causing this, but I think that at this point I've gotten rid of the majority of them and now it's just the "remnants" causing problems.  I'll try the repair/reinstall of Office and go from there.  I'm not a big fan of the format/reinstall thing, but I do recognize that it might be necessary.  Did that about 6 months ago.   Tedious, to say the least.
Thanks for all the input so far.

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Any update on the cleanup of apps and the repair/reinstall of Office?  I still have a sneaky suspicion that this might solve the problem!

I finally did a repair/install and that didn't work. So I uninstalled and reinstalled and now everything seems much better.  I'll be letting it run for a while and post back later to let you know if it continues to be effective.
Thank you all.

This is a "known issue".  It has to do with existence of a PDA, Palm, etc. using ActiveSync and also antispam apps such as SpamNet.  I have not been able to fix it.

I've found that the repeating occurances of Outlook are still happening (and it's happening in Word, my email editor) after the reinstall.
I don't use any of the ActiveSync software as i don't have a PDA, but I do use MailWasher for my antispam program.
I wish MS would acknowledge it as a known issue and do something about it.
:(

FWIW, I had a similar issue to that which you described.  I ran SpyBot S&D and had it remove all "bad" things and then immunized the system.  That did NOT seem to clear up the problem (although it did fix quite a few things there.)  I then applied Office XP SP2 and additional patches (from the office updates site) on this day.  After the SP2 and patches update, the problem has abated.

Hope this helps.