I had to reinstall Vista due to a crash. That meant reinstall Express Scribe. The new 4.16 version showed "ZERO DURATION" and wouldn't play my dss files. I tried the suggested 4.15 version, but same thing.
Then I tried the older 4.05 suggestion (from http://www.nch.com.au/scribe/index.html choose "primary"). PHEW! It didn't play at first, but then I remembered to also download the component "dss32.exe" from http://www.nch.com.au/components/index.html. It works better than ever! I hope this helps someone to know that these steps helped me. If you download the older versions, get the dss component too, or else it won't work!
THANKS to all of you who threw suggestions out for us, WITH posted links!