Issues - Sound SW & External USB Devices

I have a new Vista Home Premium Laptop (Acer Aspire 7520), purchased about 6 weeks ago. I've come across two problems, and I believe they are related.

First, whenever I hook up a USB device, such as external speakers or headset, as soon as I unplug them and return to the laptop speakers, the sound is lost altogether, and I need to uninstall the sound driver and reboot - which triggers a fix from Microsoft - to restore sound from my laptop speakers. I originally had RealTek sound drivers, but this process, undertaken a few times now, has resulted in a switch to a generic High Definition Audio Device, auto-installed from Microsoft on reboot.

Second, I downloaded SoundTap Recorder. When I tried to enable it, the silence was deafening. Even when I subsequenty disabled the new app, the laptop speakers were silent, and the little megaphone in the taskbar was showing mute, even though I tried to restore sound. So I had to uninstall Sound Tap, and this restored the laptop sound without a system reboot.

The Acer Helpdesk has recommended restoring the system to earlier settings and/or a full factory restore, but with the time (days!) I have invested in setting up my new laptop with various applications, I don't want to take such a drastic and comprehensive approach to the problem unless I am sure it is going to work.

Well, did the sound have issues before or not - if it was working fine then it should work fine again when you revert to a system restore point.

But, I want to know this - you say when you remove USB devices - are any of those devices showing in the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon in your system tray, and if so, are you safely removing them as you should?

Well, let's put it this way: as soon as I unplugged the external speakers, the problem arose. Same with the headphones. However, I should do the "safely remove hardware" thing, which I am careful to do with my ipod and other memory-keys. For some reason, I thought I could get away without doing that for speakers and headset.