Can't stop/restart postfix - pid associated with another process

This issue could happen to any other service but in this case its commssioning Postfix - it seems i can't stop postfix as the PID relates to another service - i've delete the 'master.lock' but to no available - any ideas, memeory commands etc ?
thanks in advance
ps. the serve is in Production so i have to proceed with cautio n

......................................................................................

server1 init.d]# ./postfix status
master (pid  2370) is running...

[root@server1 init.d]# ps -ef | grep 2370
root      2370  2341  0  2015 ?        00:00:00 hald-addon-input: Listening on /dev/input/event0

[/var/lib/postfix] cat master.lock
                            2370
[root@server1 postfix]# service postfix stop
Shutting down postfix:                                     [FAILED]

...rm master.lock....

[root@server1 postfix]# service postfix start
[root@server1 postfix]# service postfix status
master (pid  2370) is running...

[/var/lib/postfix]
# ls -l
total 0

What does show

postfix check 

to see if there are problems with the queue directory, for example.

postfix abort

will shut it down pretty much no matter what. It won't take down the system. But you may need to find out what is goofed up and fix it before you restart.

Does

postfix flush

send pending mail? I would guess not. But you can try to send pending email this way before you force it down.

Thanks jim

postfix check

didn't reveal anything

>service postfix status
master (pid 2370) is running...

I'm not keen on

 postfix abort 

becausa a TERM singnal gets sent to all the child processes- so if that being referend in anyway to PID 2370 i'm concerned the that PID and hence thehald process associated with that PID arevTER'ed

Maybe what i'm after is how postfix is associateding 2370 with the master when it isn't even running...?..and go form there
The client isn't a mail server, btw

Regards
stevie