Problem definitely closed, although not solved.
I must thank Calvinus for his time and patience, working with me by e-mail trying to solve this. Alas, it was not possible, but he CARED !
Probably this is due to some freaky Windows XP update, that conflicts with the sound dll (irrKlang) used by WW1. In my Win7 laptop everything works OK, so I will move on.
Again, a big thank you to Calvinus !!