Volume control in opeperable

running a bog standard pc AMD duron with win 98se 2 cdrom drives 2 hard
drives 512 meg ram and a couple of small regular speakers connected to the
speaker output socket.

there are two (s/w) cd players installed. C:\SCSI\WCDPLAY.EXE and
C:\WINDOWS\CDPLAYER.EXE.

also media player 9
C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\wmplayer.exe"

and some nero media stuff
"C:\Program Files\Ahead\NeroMediaPlayer\NeroMediaPlayer.exe"

Now the problem is - I cant seem to access my volume control or locate any
settings for it.

if i play a mp3 file with media player 9 the sound on my system speakers is
very quiet and although it can be controlled by MP9's own volume control the
out put is very low volume

if i play a regular CD using CDPLAYER.exe i get a bit louder volume but not
by much . also on the view menu when i click on VOLUME control - nothing
happens.

in addition if i try to start file SDNVOL.exe from
Start-progs-accessories-entertainment nothing happens.

so how can i access my volume control and its settings.

or more accurately should i be asking Whats happened?

rgds
Ramon A