Sure can. There's a plugin for winamp somewhere on their site, I'm almost sure of it. Take a look. The MCE remote is nothing but a regular input device, just that media center already assigns most of the buttons on it. There are programs that let you change a button or two to start or stop another program, including starting up winamp. The plugin would control it from there. Hope that helps? I'll look for specific items later.
Hmmm...ok http://www.winamp.com/plugins/details.php?id=142585 <Great MCE remote program http://www.winamp.com/plugins/details.php?id=89729 <this one is more questionable http://www.winamp.com/plugins/details.php?id=62145 <if you use an avermedia remote instead of MCE http://www.winamp.com/plugins/details.php?id=141920 <if you use a hauppage remote instead of MCE http://www.winamp.com/plugins/details.php?id=8412 <IRMan and other general remotes. This is just a few off the first 6 pages of 14 of remote plugins for winamp
I dunno if anyone else will be interested, but I just found the solution to this problem. In the Winamp preferences, enable "Global Hotkeys", and tick the box marked "Enable default multimedia key support", and then your MCE remote will work fine with winamp
