No Video

Please help. I have just purchased a new Dell system with Microsoft XP. I received some MPG video files from a friend through email. I opened the files and the Dell installed video player was launched. Through the Dell DVD player I could only get audio, no video. I also tried opening the files in Windows Media player but the files were not read at all by Windows Media Player. What do I need to do to see these video files and what should I do so that my system will correctly recognize video files and play them when I try to open them?

Any help is much appreciated.

 

Try this codec. Once registered during installation, it should work with any player.

http://codeccorner.com/file/_mpeg2_filter_for_wmp.zip

EDIT:
That link seems to have varying accessibility. If it doesn't work, go to this page and scroll down to "mpg2 patch" in the right column:
http://codeccorner.com/ah.html

 

So I downloaded the MPG2 patch and the video files still won't open in WMP at all and still only audio in Dell DVD player. I don't know exactly what happened when I downloaded the patch because there were various error messages. ???