In your sound options (Control Panel > Sounds and Audio Devices), select the Audio tab and in the section where it says MIDI Music Playback, switch it to Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth in the pull-down menu. Depending on your sound card, it might not have the ability to play MIDI files from the old EQ zones.
On older SoundBlaster cards you had the option to fill the SoundBanks with instruments which gave MIDI a whole different sound experience. But that uses system memory, and that option has been long gone since the newer cards came out.
I used to fill my soundbanks with 128+ instruments, and it made EQ sound like a freaking orchestra was playing. As the years went on, I got sick and tired of changing them and just selected the Microsoft one and found out that it gets the job done just fine. Plus it was a pain to configure all of the instruments only to find out on of the drums was botched.
The reason why combat and death music work fine is because they're MP3s. So are the newer zones and later that were released after PoP.
Hope that helps.
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