Windows Movie Maker and AVI files

> I have a digital camera that takes video and thought that seeing I have
> all these little bits of video on my computer , that I would play
> around with them a bit and put some of them together etc.
> I have XP and notice I have Windows Movie Maker, so I open it up and
> read up about importing AVI files. It says it's pretty straight
> forward...just click File than Import and then find the one you want
> and away you go...it should just put a copy of the fil
> e you want into 'my collection'.
> And according to the properties my bits of video are AVI files, which
> WMM say's should work just fine.
> Except every time I try I get this message....
>
> "This file cannot be imported.
> Remote files using http, ftp, and other internet protocols cannot be
> imported.
> Please copy the files to your local disk to use with
> Windows Movie Maker."
>
> These files are already in Local Disk (C ...(what ever that is?) but I
> made copies and it still doesn't work.
> I am going CRAZY !!!!
> Please help