vm process won't die

i had a user state she was not getting a desktop when she selected it in horizon
after looking at horizon manager (6.0), i found one of the desktops had an error when trying to delete
when looking at vcenter (5.5) there were a slew of errors saying that the virtual machine cannot be powered off (from guest initiated power off) because "another task is in progress".  i opened the console and it is at the windows 7 logon screen and is not responding.

i tried to forcibly power off but esx refused for the same reason.  even using esxcli to kill the world id with soft, hard, and force options do nothing.  short of rebooting the host (5.5), any other ideas?

it isn't trying to install vmware tools as i've been reading so that isn't the issue.  the parent vm has updated tools already.
other virtual desktops seem to be running fine as other users are working in them.  not sure what happened with this one; nothing seems unusual in the guest vmware log