Many times, when I run VLC Portable, after watching something in full screen (e.g. episodes of Lost, most recently), there will be another program running on the taskbar beside VLC. It won't have a name and its icon will be the default Windows .exe (white window with solid blue title bar). Clicking the taskbar entry twice makes it disappear.
I can't find anything out of the ordinary in the Task Manager.
That's just part of the full-screen window, not another app. Sometimes it gets left behind. The local version of VLC does it, too.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Oh yeah, forgot about that. IIRC VLC used to have two windows anyway. The controls and the video output. That was why for a couple years I used it only as a backup player. Now it's all in one window, but I guess that's the same thing, more or less.
Thanks, glad to know it's not something unique or unexpected.