It's fixed. It took Yahoo 1 week to get back to me (hence why i posted here).

I was a little upset when their suggestion was to reinstall WMP 10.0. I had already done that. However, for some reason, it worked this time (i did check one check box differently this time on the setting during install - unfortunately i can't remember what it is and am not sure what if it did it or not), b/c:

it started to work for the night. then stopped working again. this morning, i got an email from yahoo saying that there is a new version out. i installed it, restarted, and voila, it is working now.

Paul