All Media on my computer has died!?

Something real big happened to my computer. Lets start with Media Player. Media player will open, but wont play any file at all. Quicktime wont even open at all. VLC player, for flv files, opens and plays everything. Except for two problems, NO SOUND. It is not muted, i plugged my headphones in and no sound (except for the usual low-level white noise telling me my headphones work). I cannot click on the files ociated with VLC. I must open VLC and choose which file to play. BTW, there is no sound at all emanating from my speakers or headphones, it is not just for playing media. This occurance coincides with my interner browsers, both IE and FireFox, crashing everytime i try to load a flash video ie youtube and other such sites. Ive searched around trying to fix the internet browser thing hoping everything else will fall in line but no such luck at all. Is there anybody out there with any kind of advice?