Vista - Sudden inability to play media files (Winamp, WMP)

Two days ago everything was working fine. I've had this laptop and most of
the media files for over a couple months, with no problems.

Suddenly, yesterday, my computer decides it can't play my media files.

*Winamp attempts to play music files (mp3) then before you hear anything it
acts like I never hit the play button (the little bars by the timer jump up
then die off, and do that "rolling wave", as I like to call it, that it does
when you hit pause). Trying to play AOL Radio on it proves fruitless as
well, now. It won't even make the effort to fake starting up. I have
reinstalled twice.

*WMP tells me it cannot access any of my media files (music and video); that
it can't find the proxy and that I might not have permission from my network
to play them. This is a joke, seeing how the files are on my own C: drive,
and I'm not connect to anything but my wireless internet.

I fell like my computer is laughing at me because I downloaded AOL and then
uninstalled it when I realized I couldn't use it. So now I'm not allowed to
listen to anything beyond the default windows sounds. ALL of my codecs are
up to date.

(Heck, even now it won't let my taskbar indicator tell me I'm connected. It
won't load the network list/Network and Sharing Center. In other words, it
says I'm not connected, but obviously I am, or else I wouldn't be here
posting.)