Videos will not play. Black screen, audio only.

I have some movies saved on my external HDD and I can play them on my old laptop. I got a newish laptop from a friend and it has Windows XP on it as well. I updated programs and such so everythin is up to date. I tried to watch a movie and it just plays with a black screen, with just the audio. I downloaded cccp, and xvid. Both did not work. I also downloaded and tried to play with VIC it didn't work either. I had the same codec issue on my old laptop as well and all I did to solve that was get xvid. What is the issue?

 

You can analyze video file with MediaInfo. This program will tell you how this file is encoded, and then you will know what video codec is needed.

You can also try playing file with Media Player Classic Home Cinema, which is similar to VLC in that it does not require separate installation of codecs. It is advisable to use a latest build of MPC-HC, available on this site.

 

Right you need a codec pack, or you could run a program and find out which codec is needed and find it, but installing a codec pack like
http://majorgeeks.com/K-Lite_Codec_Pack_Full_d4844.html
covers everything.

 

I installed the codec pack, still does not work.