I've run into issues where the CTDataLoader service will crash on my task servers. This results in a condition where the console will show tasks never starting/finishing, even though the client has completed the tasks sucessfully. More information on this issue can be found in the KB article TECH43681. Unfortunately this KB doesn't offer much in the way of help, so I've been working to create my own band-aids for the issue.
I had been simply setting the recovery options for the service to restart the service, but in some situations, the service fails to start. I've found that restarting the Altiris Object Host Service first will allow me to restart the CTDataLoader service. Knowing that, I created this simple batch file (attached below) which handles the process for me. I set my recovery options to run the batch file on any failures (as seen in Figure 1). Hope this helps someone else.
Figure 1 - Recovery Options for the CTDataLoader Service using the restart_CTDATALOADER.cmd batch file
Feel free to drop me a line if you have any questions.