weird audio problems

[welshTerrier2]

i installed Skype about a year ago ... i bought something called a "Skype" phone that is basically a speaker/microphone combo that not only lets you speak and listen on a device that looks like a cell phone but also lets you dial and control the Skype menus from its keypad ...

to use the device instead of my PC speaker, i plug the device into the USB port ... when Skype is configured correctly, i choose a "Sound Device" option called "Generic USB Audio Device" instead of "Windows Default Device".

This reroutes the input and output audio to my "Skype phone" instead of through my PC speakers ...

Here's the problem: the device setting seems to get overwritten ... sometimes while i'm on a call, i hear a noise and the call gets dropped. When i check the Skype device settings, the "Generic USB" device option is no longer on the list ... after closing Skype and reopening, it sometimes reappears ... sometimes this takes several cycles to work ...

what's going on here? why does the device driver i need just disappear? is there anything i can do to solve this problem?

i was thinking of giving up my USB-based Skype phone and just getting a simple headset that could plug into the audio jack and the microphone jack ... i assume that would just use the standard Windows device drivers ...

fwiw, i'm running Windows XP Pro with SP2 on a laptop ...

any ideas would be greatly appreciated ...