headphone problem?

today i got a new microphone/headphone combo. at first i didn't think they worked and i was messing around. i finally found out that if i plug them in i have to close every window before they will work. than if i want to unplug them and just have my speakers work i have to close out of every window again. any1 know how i can fix it so i don't have to close every window every time i want to plug or unplug my headphones?

I would say update or reinstall your sound drivers. It sounds like the app that detects the presence of headphones may be corrupt - it should probably just pop up a window informing you that it detects that the phones are plugged/unplugged.

Vista has a tendency to do that, some programs can automatically switch between headphone and speaker mode, others give you the option to switch between outputs (winamp for example). And others are just funky, I've yet to get IE to work right, one day it'll switch between modes fine, others I have to restart it. So far nothing has fixed all the problems, all I can say is that it seems to be getter each time a major update comes through. When Vista first came out I would have to restart my pc for it to switch between headphone or speakers. Just try and do the whole driver reinstall and hope for the best.