Problems with media player and real audio.

Help if you can please. I have a ton of different music and recording programs, each of which seems to add codecs into the list in the control panel.
I am having a problem with the Microsoft media player trying to play everything in double time. I had this problem once before and cured it when I found a duplicate codec in the list and erased it. No such luck this time. I tried checking do not map through this device on each one to no avail. In fact everything else still seems to be working normally with all video and audio codecs turned off.. go figure.
Both player seem to gag on every file.
I can play some through wavelab but I can't visit any streaming audio sites, this is frustrating.