Not able to play source video in source monitor or timeline

Setup: Windows 10 with all updates.

Latest version of Premiere Pro with my Adobe cloud account.

Videos discussed below were created using the screen recorder HyperCam5

Settings for the *.avi saved video were:

   HyperCam5 is supposed to be capturing with Microsoft Video 1

   Under a compressor setting, I set something called Temporal Quality Ratio to 1.0 which was the highest setting.

   Rate in Frames per Second is set: Record 15, Playback 15 and a key frame every 100 frames

I've created 2 videos by means of HyperCam5 screen recorder.  One was saved as *.mp4 and now a larger one saved as *.avi, since I was not able even review the mp4 inside pp... that is, I could not play it inside pp

Premiere is able to recognize the videos and pull them into media browser.  But once in Source monitor and on the timeline I have not been able to figure out how to make them play.  Using space bar has no effect, clicking the icon that normally means to start playing .. on source monitor has no effect.

I can drag the timeline or Source monitor cursors around and the video shows what is at the cursor postition throughout the cursor drag.. But again, no finding a way to make the darn thing play.

Its possible the problem is shear stupidity because whereas once upon a time I could work with premier and was decently familiar with its workings, I haven't edited a video for several years and have largely forgotten whatever my little pea brain had picked up. But surely hitting play shouldn't be rocket science, so I'm guessing there is some kind of problem with videos.