newbie gstreamer sdk problem

[Perdie Perduta]

I just got the gstreamer SDK for Windows from
http://docs.gstreamer.com/display/GstSDK/Installing+on+Windows and the
tutorials seem to compile and run which is a good start. :)

Then as suggested in the first tutorial I edited the source code to
specify a local file and it doesn't work :(

I tested the link by Ctrl clicking it in the source code in visual
studio and windows media player then opens and plays my media no
problem. I tried an .avi file as well as .mp4 file and neither of them
will render on gstreamer :(

IOW in basic-tutorial-1.c I replaced the line:

pipeline = gst_parse_launch ("playbin2
uri=http://docs.gstreamer.com/media/sintel_trailer-480p.webm", NULL);

with:

pipeline = gst_parse_launch ("playbin2
uri=file://D:/AudioDriver/sample.avi", NULL);

what could be going wrong?
Thanks for any help :)