Problem playing AVI-files

Hello, I recently downloaded a bunch of avi video files. Most work fine but some have the following problem when playing on my desktop computer:

Every minute or so the frame freezes for a few seconds, the audio goes on normally and then the frame catches up. Needless to say this is extremely annoying. At first I thought the problem was with the avi-files themselves, but it turns out that they work fine on my laptop (which has a slower CPU, less RAM, and so forth). I'm using PowerDVD to play the video on both computer. Both have Windows XP. I've tried windows media player and Media Player Classic on my desktop, but I get the same problem.

Any idea what's causing this and how to fix it?

 

try VLC player, some files that i was unable to play on WMP or CMP worked perfectly on VLC.

 

I use VLC for .mov files, QuickTime is not my friend. Check your display adapter also, Control Panel, Display, Settings, Advanced. Hardware Acceleration is set to Full, and write combing is enabled? You could also try a manual Windows Update to see if there are any hardware updates, in my experience these don't show using automatic updates download and install. And lastly go to Device Manager and manually check for hardware driver updates that way.
Bug

 

Just installed VLC Player and it seems to work with these avi-files. Thanks.

Also, I checked that Hardware Acceleration was set to Full and write combing was enabled. Not sure why PowerDVD, WMP and RPC have a problem with these files on my desktop computer but I guess it doesn't matter now. I'll just use VLC player.