I have yet another problem with ADB (on windows XP SP3)

so here it is -

Fresh boot my computer
Fire up Titanium
Test App in Emulator
Sucess! (it works)

..
…
….
Go back to titanium
Make simple change in the code
Test app in emulator
ADB returns 0 devices/emulators

Sometimes, and i must stress sometimes, if i CTL ALT DEL and kill the ADB process, and then click <launch> in Titanium it will work, but 90% of the time. It will fail with the same ADB error.
I can verify that the emulator is ready, available and running. So it's not that.
The only solution that i've found to be working is to reboot my computer. Granted it does work, but rebooting your computer every time that you make a simple code change is just nutts.

Anyone else have this problem. And, more importantly is there a solution?….
I'm on windows so is it possable that the Windows version of the Android SDK just simply has issues? If that's the case….would linux work better. I have Ubuntu on my TabletPC, and works great :)