Hi,
I also get the same problems in certain times. Actually when i forceshutdown the managed server before application deployment, the server state shows FAILED or sometimes TASK IN PROGRESS.
So what we need to do is just look into the server log file where we can see that some java program is running which can hold that server to start or stop.
Certain times we can just find out the server's pid and kill that which is running. then try it will allow us to start and stop the server.