Canon Powershot A40 AVI Movie (can't view)

I have a Canon powershot a40 camera and it has a
movie mode, when I save that movie and download it
onto my pc (running windows 2000 pro) thru the
card reader (no canon software installed) I can
see the avi movie file but no matter what I try to
open it with it won't open and play.

If i put the card back in the camera it works and
I can see and play the video, but what I want to
do is be able to watch it on the pc and or convert
it to a smaller format (say WMV) for emails or
whatnot...

Just wondered if anyone here had a solution that
would allow me to do this.

I even tried to just rename the file movie.avi to
movie.mpg, but that didnt work either.

Tried Windows Media Player 9 (it says The file
type is not supported by the Player) altho in the
help section it says WMP9 plays avi

Tried Windows Media Encoder 7 (wont accept avi)

Thanks for any info or replies, I know the camera
came with software but I haven't found the disc
yet (figure that might be my only hope), but i
didnt expect this to be an issue, being an avi i
figured media player would play it or media
encoder would allow me to convert it, so far no
luck...

Bill