Background process won't shut down

We just got through a huge project where we have been using After Effects and Character Animator to produce several animations involving multiple scenes from Character Animator in each one. We haven't been running into any issues up until now.

After I've opened After Effects and rendered out the animation using Adobe Media Encoder I've encountered a problem when I've shut both programs down. One of the background processes for Character Animator remains running and will not shut down. I've tried ending the task but nothing happens. I've gone to the process itself and tried the same but I'm told access denied. If I try to open either Character Animator or the file we've been working on in After Effects, both programs stall out and I have to force quit them. Once that's done the Character Animator process remains in the background.

I've even tried a restart of the computer—and this is where things get weird—but it won't. My computer won't restart. I have to do a hard boot to reset everything. Once this is done the Character Animator is gone. I don't like having to force my computer to shut down.

Can anyone help me?

What info do you need from me?

Windows 10 Professional