Zach - I am unaware of any changes to my computer that could have done this.
I installed games and that is the only changes.

Neil - I tried both links. The first one automatically brought up WMP and
played the file. It was the same when I used ctrl+U. But the other one when
clicked used Quicktime inside my firefox window. When I tried the ctrl+U it
did the same thing as when I try my other music files. Most of which are
*.mp3 format. It (the little time bar at the bottom of the player) will move
very slowly and will not play any sound.

I apologize that I offended you by reminding you that this is not a support
forum.  Taking support questions to support channels seemed to be the better
way to make people's lives better faster.  Your doom-and-gloom attitude
seemed unfounded based upon a peer newsgroup and I'm sure was a bright spot
in the lives of many as opposed to positive redirection to actual support
channels:
http://zachd.com/pss/pss.html#psssupport
=)

Just because your problem wasn't resolved without taking it to actual
support doesn't mean you have any particular need to rain on other's parades
by disparaging others who do make positive contributions here.  (I'm not
speaking about myself.  You can despise me all you want, as I'm more than
aware that some strong anti-M$ prejudices exist out there, so I'm damned by
association.)  If you're going to be upset, I really hope you've actually
gone to actual product support as opposed to hoping that some magic will
magically happen to fix your problems.  I want your system, regardless of
tools players or OS, to work perfectly - so pointing you to good resources
is part of making sure you're on a path to that success.  Please don't
misinterpret an attempt at positive correction and redirection as criticism.
If it doesn't work, that's awful - and so let's now focus on positive
solutions and channels that might get you closer to happiness.  You can call
that goose-stepping, I call that logical problem-solving.  =)

I noted with sad amusement that your suggestion can create other problems
with the player, so first you tell them to dodge trying to solve the problem
and then you accidentally make it worse.  Oh well: I'm glad you're happier
now : Nero has some very cool features.  =)

If you do install Nero, if I recall correctly you can fix most(?) of their
resetting of Windows Media Player keys by going to the Set Program Access
and Defaults control panel and setting the player as default.  I have some
notes on what Nero does elsewhere, but if you use SPAD that should likely
reset you back to normal post-Nero.  (Notably HREF clicks to media content
within the browser may no longer work until you run the SPAD tool.)

Also, I think I'm missing something - I see two posts by you ever here:
http://groups.google.com/groups/search?q=coling+wmp
- one about KAR, one about a buggy sound card driver / glitchy audio
enhancement.  So where does this experience of yours trying to solve this
problem come from?  I'm always curious about online problem-solving arenas,
so I would be pleased to learn what I've overlooked here.

What have you been doing to attempt to resolve this problem?