Task manager problems and hang ups

I am a Windows noob, sorta, so bear with me. I normally run macs (was PC then went to mac and now I have both)

Win XP all current updates and such
HP 520c Athlon 1600+
512mb/60gig HD/voodoo 4500

All stock except voodoo card and no overclocking.

Sometimes I get some nasty crashes. Most seem to be caused mainly by voodoo driver problems and video games(using Beta drivers). I'm not so concerned about that as mch as certain freezes I have been getting elsewhere. For instance I was on a web page the other day, I think it was a computer sales site, and Explorer hung up. I could move the mouse and click on differet windows but the windows would get selected and not redraw. I tried to move out of it by going to the task bar but it then froze. Alt+ctrl+del did nothing. I hit it again, one more time and waited. I am puttering around on my other machine then about 60 -90 seconds later the task manager responds and tells me it is ending tasks (they arent responding). On the task manager it shows about 15 task manager in progress and the other items normally on the menu. I have to try and click on every single item and force it to end task. It takes forever. I went thru all of them when it happened before and it took me about 15 minutes to manually close it all out so I could restart. I didnt want to do that again so I was looking for some sort of close all function. When I went to the task manager menu and told it to restart it seemed to have made dozens of copies of itself instantly (I could see the windows all in line behind it). Then everything went to a grinding halt. I had to turn off the machine the hard way. It booted up ok as it normally does but still, I know it wont be more then a few days before I get this again.

I have scanned for viruses and heat/hardware problems. I don't see anything really worng with it except some driver incompatibilty. I think this time something on that website froze me up. I am pretty sure it was some sort of stupid Java cuz I saw the tray had a Java icon activated which is normally not there.

My questions is this: how do I deal with the task manager when it's bugging out like that? I can't seem to just select all and tell it to close it all down. I hate to forcefully hard boot the system but it seems I don't have a choice. Any ideas?

Another small question. Something put this GAIN ad server pop up crap on my system and I can't get rid of it. I'm sure some of yu are aware of it. It shows up on XP all over the place. I uninstalled the potential software that was associated with it but it but I can't seem to uninstall that GAIN software. The uninstaller won't work. I don't want to juust rip the folder out and delete it but I just might. Anyone know about this junk? Its driving me crazy.

Thanks!