Lost Shared Connection / Vista Hangs ?

If I lose a network connection in a program (for example, a server
goes down or a router drops, etc) whatever program is running
hopelessly hangs. The program in question (or several) will just gray
out (everything goes light colored) and it reports "not responding" in
the title bar. You can't exit the program. You can't end it through
task manager. Process explorer can't kill it. Worse yet, you can't log
off and you can't shut down. Vista just gets stuck and a hard boot is
required.

XP, OTOH, just checks for a few seconds after a drive drops, reports
"drive not available", and you continue normally with that program.

Is there some way to correct this serious deficiency in Vista?

Thanks,