AVI won't play. VLC say's doesn't support "IV50" Format. All codecs present

[Sikander]

Help,
I made some very low res family videos using my web cam way back in 2003. They are saved as AVI files, I remember playing them on my XP machine without any trouble.
I took them out again the other day and tried playing them, I'm using Windows 7 now. None of them will play, I can just hear the sound and no video, VLC gives the error that the player doesn't support "IV50" format and that there's no way for me to fix this.

I installed ffdshow, didn't work, then the K-lite codec pack standard, still doesn't work, then BS player, same thing.

One thing i'm not sure about is that when I previously used to watch downloaded movies using wmplayer or any other programme, the ffdshow icons used to show in the taskbar, they don't anymore when I open any of the movies, although the "show ffdshow icon in taskbar" icon is checked in the ffdshow settings.
So i'm not sure if ffdshow is even working, and I don't know where to enable disable it since the settings are so confusing, I'm not a pro.
Can anyone help me out please.
Thanks.

[redwudz]

IV50 (Indeo) was discontinued by MS some time ago. It's no longer included on newer OSs. The rights were bought by Ligos, but they haven't done anything with it either, AFAIK. The newer versions are payware.

You can try this freeware version, IV50 5.11 codec: http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Indeo_Codec.htm

I just drop the IV50's I come across into Any Video Converter and encode them into a more useful format.

[Sikander]

Thanks a bunch. I forgot the "google before you ask a question" which I almost always use.
Found my fix here
http://www.moviecodec.com/solutions/iv31-iv32-iv41-iv50-indeo-3-4-and-5-8211/
But I think I really need to use a video converter, since these files won't directly even upload to facebook.
Thanks.