Firewire not working - please help...

Tried everything, googled all I could, but neither my Sony DCR-HC96 DV camcorder or my Iomega external HDD work through IEEE1394.
Tried my XP Laptop, tried my friend's Apple, nothing is seen by the computer...
Don't really know what to do now, tried different cables: 4p-4p, 4p-6p and 6p-6p.
All the computers show working IEEE1394 adapters but nothing is detected.

On the W7 machine I ran devmgmt.exe and assigned the legacy driver, nope...
And I do want to use W7 because XP's FAT32 hacks the films in 3.5Gb pieces.

USB works OK but it's not fast enough for the camcorder which results in bad quality.

To tell you the truth firewire won't work on the XP machines either...
Returned the cc to Sony, they allegedly replaced a fuse and the ieee1394 circuitry...still not working.

I'm really at the end of my tether, so I hope you good folks have a bright idea...

I have several audio devices that connect via firewire in my recording studio. In all of these devices I had to install vendor drivers before Windows would recognize the devices. It wasn't the firewire port, although I did have to change to the legacy driver for one device until they got new Win 7 drivers.

barend said:

And I do want to use W7 because XP's FAT32 hacks the films in 3.5Gb pieces.

If FW works on XP, why don't you just run XP on NTFS?

FW doesn´t work on XP either, or on Apple Snow Leopard, the only thing I didn´t tray is some Linux flavor...

Are the external power supplies you're using for these devices working correctly?

The only other thing I can think of is you used both devices on a system that had a faulty Firewire port and it somehow damaged the internals of both devices, didn't you mention one of them needed a fuse replaced?

Also, even though you're supposed to be able to hot swap Firewire, it is possible to do damage when using the powered 6-pin ports.

Ap

Yes, they replaced a fuse in the camera but it still wouldn't work, scanned the forums and found one posting of somebody stating Sony required 4p-4p mini fw cable for it to work.
The cc is again at Sony's now, wonder if, again, a fuse has blown.
What they should do of course is provide some information how to proceed, as my computers have a 4p and 6p fw socket respectively.
After the cc came back I tried 4p-6p on the PC, so maybe the fuse blew instantly?
But I found no info on the web that 4p-6p cables are incompatible...
It's complicated, there's lots of people complaining of the cc-ieee1394 issue...and Sony gives no info whatsoever!