Volume control problem

I have WINXP Pro. Never had this before. Windows volume control worked fine and all of a sudden every time I play a new song the volume is off. Open volume window from tray and everything is the same except the wave vol is all the way down. Turn it up and it's ok. Click the next song and no vol. Open box and the wave is turned all the way down again. If I leave the volume window open the wave volume slide stays at full-as all others still are- but there's no sound until I move the wave slide a little and then sound comes. Any ideas? Thanks.
This was using WINAmp. Now I tried WMP and there's no problem. Still confused since I like winamp.

 

boot in safe mode and test. does the problem occur here? if so, what's in startup?

my guess = something in startup is 'helping' u on sound and shouldn't be.

other thoughts:
uninstall winamp to test
uninstall any sound utils/codec paks/etc to test

 

I dl a new version and seems to work fine. Thanks.