Snmpd dead but subsys locked

I have an NMS and a Client machine. I want the client to send traps to the NMS. I have been configuring the snmpd.conf file testing if i disable a process do i receive an alert or not. For the changes to reflect that were made in the conf file i restarted the snmpd daemon each time. The testing was going fine. All of a sudden when i restarted snmpd i recieved the error msg "snmpd dead but subsys locked". I googled for answer as to what it actually meant and found out that when a service is started a logfile is created in the /var/lock/subsys. Sometimes if the service is not stopped properly or whatever the logfile remains created. Though i started/stopped the snmpd service properly it didnt go away so i removed the file manually (via rm cmd). when i checked the status the error "snmpd dead but subsys locked" was gone. On my NMS i recieved the alert of snmpd coldstart. i started the snmpd service everything goes fine! BUT after 5 mins again i recieve the same error message and this keeps on happening..what do i need to do now?