Hmm, which one is the parent process again?
How to find out?

Hmm, I guess it went to meet it's maker, it's pushing up the daisies, it is an EX-Process....

That it is "non-exista" is proven by the fact that there are zombies... (definition: a zombie is a process which parent exited/died without telling the child)

So, shooting zombies is bad enough ;-), but shooting invisible parent tasks, that is too much for me...

Tell me: what does kill a zombie in the real world?
A stick, silber bullets, holy water?
Somebody versed in all these zombie movies?
How do they kill them there?

Adopt it, then shoot it ;) .

Some more ideas:
Blessing the kernal? Removing all M$ software from the house?
Treatening "init" to be shot if it does not get rid of the pest it caused in the first place?
Taking top for randsom?
Extortion? Blackmail? Sendmail?
isn't there a exorcist deamon around?
exorcistd ? Xexorcist?
Maybe time to name the offenders: 3 tasks of "wineserver"

No, I meant it as half-joke only. Is there a way to catch a process which was cut loose? No way to reattach the PID? Overwrite the PID-address with a zero-daemon? What does garbage collection do -- can it be used?

And if it's wineservers, you might try it with wine (one glass for me too, please) :D . And exorcist daemons -- now really ;) .

Ahh, wine!

Is there maybe the evil spirit of Gates trapped in my machine? Was it infected by the code destined to run unholy windows code on it?