Unkillable console windows

I'm developing an OpenGL based 2d simulation with GLUT under Visual C++ 2008, sometimes when I have an assert() or unhandled exception and break into the debugger, the GLUT display window closes, but the console window remains open.They just cant be killed!!!

They do开发者_JAVA百科 not show up with Task manager, Process Explorer or any other tool, I cannot find the window handle using the Spy++ tool either.

Worst thing is they prevent my system (Windows XP) from shutting down, I have to manually poweroff (and of course I have to run chkdsk on my drives and invariably it finds and fixes minor errors after bad shutdowns)

Has anyone come across such an issue?

It's a driver problem. There's nothing you can do besides hope that you get an updated driver.

I started noticing this several months ago when debugging a simple console application on XP - not sure if it was due to our switch from VS2005 to VS2008 or some patch from MS.