Converting video for basic XP systems

[digitalb]

After attending a lot of presentations where the playback of video's failed,
i would like to know which settings to use to be safe my video will play on " every " version of windows XP
mostly in Powerpoint presentations.
Video should play without installing codecs or media players
Learned that .avi is the most common, but what codecs to use for video and sound?
Quality is more important than size for me.
Any suggestions?

[Placio74]

I think can use MS MPEG-4 v2 and MP3 (Lame).

By default, Windows XP supports only few A/V codecs.

[digitalb]

Thanks !
VLC is my favourite at home, plays almost anything
but for my presentations i have to use a pc on which i cannot install anything or use *.exe from usb stick
so i will keep to mpeg1 or wmv