Here's what happened the last two times:
I loaded up the Honest Hearts file to investigate some references and then closed out - the render, cell, and object windows all closed but the main geck window container did not. I hit ctrl+alt+delete and ended the task but I got a message asking me if I wanted to kill the process. So I did. And then my entire system was completely unresponsive (and I mean "completely unresponsive")
The next time, I was looking in at my own .esp (which has been fine the last week) and then quit when I was done - and the same thing happened.
The only thing I can do is force a power down from the tower itself.
Anybody got any insight on this?