Charlie,

The Melabs usb programmer program has a pull down menu for options.

Un-check the "Update configuration from file". Now it will keep the configurations
you selected and not reset these each time you flash the pic.

I agree with Peter the Melabs USB programmer is the way to go. Many questions on this forum
are on configurations problems. Melabs USB program has a pull down configuration check list for each
pic supported. The negative is the price, I think it is about $80usd.