Greetings from muggy, humid, warm, southern Louisiana.  :)  I am a middle aged female who is pretty good at knowing my way around a computer, but I have come across a problem that has made my blood run cold.  I bought my HP touchscreen desktop just a little over a year ago and it came with Movie Maker.  I lost my husband to cancer in April of last year to cancer and then 4 months later to the day, I lost my youngest daughter to a crazed crack addict with a gun.  I only mention this so that you will know the extent of my desperation.  I have YEARS worth of video clips stored in my external hard drive (several drives, actually).  I had no problem with Movie Maker in the beginning, even being able to make a sweet video of pictures of my husband to share with my children and step children....I was really very happy with it.  

The problem is that now, every single last one of my videos, both on my local drive and on my external drive have been turned into Movie maker files.  I'm sure I made that mistake on some occasion, but I swear, I don't remember doing it.  I have ONE single solitary clip of my late daughter that is still in MP4 format.  If I try to look at ANY of the other files in Movie Maker (even though they are Movie Maker files) they will NOT play.  I get audio ONLY, that is, if I am lucky enough to get anything at all.  I have tried to open the files in different programs such as video and Windows Media player to no avail.  I'm on the verge of tears.  I can't face losing all of that video that cannot be replaced.  I've even considered uninstalling Movie Maker to see if that would make a difference, but thought better of it.  Short of buying a new computer with crossed fingers, is there ANYTHING I can do?  I'm truly desperate and heart broken.  I need to be able to access those videos because they are the only tiny pieces of my husband, daughter and baby grandson that we also lost 3 years ago, left.  Any and all info and suggestions would be greatly appreciated.  

God bless