Certain videos will not save as a playable file?

Hey everybody, new here and dont know anything about laptops or windows.
I have about 200 short videos off of my GoPro. I put the SD card in the laptop (Asus) and they all download onto some kind of program where it shows the video and lets me play them. (this window is not the typical storage window where you find pictures, documents, ect. I don't know what it is. It seems to just be for playing or viewing). Every video plays in this window. The problem occurs when I open the ACTUAL browser window where you find the list of documents on your computer, where you can click Hard drive, Pictures, Videos, music, desktop, ect. I click "Pictures" (for some reason it decided to put all the videos in pictures section instead of videos section). All the files show up, BUT only about a quarter of them show a preview of the video. The others just look like a piece of paper icon with the top edge folded, and is labeled with a number on the bottom. When I click one of these, instead of playing it it asks "How would you like to open this file? Would you like to find an app for that?" Why would some of the videos open just fine and have the preview icon, and others be blank and require an app? Why do all the videos work perfectly in the viewing window when 3/4 of them dont work in the other window?

The main goal i'm trying to accomplish, is copy these videos on to an external hard drive. But they show up on the external hard drive the same way they show up in the folder when I copy them, 3/4 of them a non working icon.

The other goal is put some of these videos into Powerdirector16 editor program, and do some editing. To make things even more confusing, if I go to powerdirector, and browse for files, and find them, they all appear just fine. So I may be able to edit, but I'm not able to copy onto hard drive, because 3/4 of the videos being nonworking icons.

I hope this makes sense, I have been playing with this for hours, and I really don't understand what it, or I, am doing.

Welcome to the tenforums, 88lance.

Two questions: how well do you know GoPro, vis a vis the format or container videos are created in? And is their any prior knowledge or experience about computers and operating systems?

The first answer would point to either different format/container or a corruption during creation.

The second answer would point to how much hand-holding is needed.

Broadly speaking, your laptop and Windows is set to automatically play media files from external devices from a default program, depending on the file's extension (format/container).

Despite the list containing either a preview or icon, its files should be transferable to another drive, which is the goal.

File Explorer does not play any media file; it merely lists them. Depending on the file exctension (format/container), it will show either a preview thumbnail or the default icon.

To find out what the extensions are when one is in File Explorer, select from the Ribbon Menu >> View >> Change options. In the dialogue box that follows, select the View tab. In the scrolling list, untick hide extensions of known file types.

If it turns out all the media files have the same extension, then GoPro experts will have to chime in to help explain the different results.