Okay, I found the thread from last month but it's not very satisfying. The registry hack does indeed help, but at the cost of compromising the buffer. I've got the reg setting in question set to a very low 500 (decimal) and I've got buffering (inside the DirectSound settings dialog box) set to a very low 1 second. With that the time works up to 2 seconds before the end of the song. I haven't heard any skipping/drop-outs yet, but I probably will run into that with these settings.
I've been with MC since 7.0 and I love this program. a) I find it lame to ask a user "Is this [inaccuracy] of the elapsed time a 'problem' for you? --The thing is not working correctly, it's a bug, it's not a feature. Elapsed time should measure elapsed time, if it doesn't, it's broke. b) It would require extra programming to fix
WMP buffers its music AND tracks time of the song up the next-to-last second at which point it changes to 0:00 of the next song (which equals the last second of the current song with no gap is in place).