Sound problems on XP Pro

Hello, I've been having audio playback problems on my 5 day old XP installation. It was fine until today morning. Mp3's playback on players, but sound distorted. The instruments play sorta fine, but the vocals are too feeble. What do I need to do ? I ran a sfc /scannow, but the problem persists..

 

What sound card are you using or is it onboard?

What driver version is it using?

Have you installed any software recently?

 

I'm a noob, so I do not know about the card. But I had the same problem last year when I was on 98SE. A reinstall of the OS due to another reason had solved this that time. So I'm guessing its not a hardware issue ?

Its using the Intel AC' 97 drivers I think. I haven't installed any software immediately before this problem occured.

Could it be because both Winamp and BSplayer seem to have mp3 format enabled ? I mean when I launch winamp, it changes all mp3 files to winamp media files. When I launch BSplayer, it changes them back to BSplayer files..