Odd soundcard issues.
 

Today when I went to open Winamp to play some music, the sound was very quiet and distorted, though volume on everything was maxed. The odd thing, is that everything plays normally if the balance is switched entirely to the right or left. I have been primarily using an old SB Live card for sound because the onboard sound has too much static.
Considering how old it is, I figured it was the cause, so I reenabled and reinstalled the onboard soundcard. It has the exact same problem, though the distortion is far more noticable. This occurs with my headset and with my monitor's built in speakers. Uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers makes no difference, nor does different driver versions.
My specs are:
AMD Athlon 64 3700+
2 GB Ram
512 MB Geforce 7950 GT
Asus A8N32 SLi Deluxe Systemboard w/ALC850 onboard sound
Sound Blaster Live 5.1 (SB0100)
OS: Windows XP Pro

Any input as to what is causing this would be appreciated.

Edit: This problem is not occurring on Ubuntu 6.10. I am beginning to think I may need to reinstall Windows for the billionth time.