Ok, I am running Ubuntu and it came with rhythmbox 0.8.8

My problem is that I cant play my mp3 or wmas (I also cant play any videos in any other program)

I can SEE some movie files, but cannot hear anything.

Any advice? any at all.

apt-get install xmms (one of the best players for mp3's)
apt-get install mplayer-586 (for movies)

Also you might wanna look for a package called w32codec (or w32codecs), this has codecs for media formats such as wma, mpg etc. After installation mplayer and xmms can be found in applications>> sound & video.

EDIT: I am sorry, I didnt see that you cant hear any sound.. try alsamixer as root from console and make sure tht your soundcard output is not muted. If you dont see anything with that thn post output for lspci here.

Good Luck

rythmbox was probably configured to use gstreamer for playback ( this is the downside of package managers, apt-get can get and install it for you but who makes the decisions?) make sure you have all of the components you need from gstreamer, or optionally recompile rhythmbox yourself and use xine for the backend instead of gstreamer ( and install the win32codecs for your wma's).