Check the firewire connection on your camcorder aswell, does the plug fit it tightly when pushed in or can you move it around, it should be a tight fit with no movement.

I'm just after spotting something in your post, a few months ago someone else on the forum had a similar problem to what you describe and they had to uninstall some driver (sorry, I can't remember what it was called) and apparantly that solved their problem. I can only vaguely remember bits of the post and it mentioned something about the Device Manager and removing something in there, it might be a Sony driver or even the IEEE1394 Bus Host Controller that's listed.

__________________
Better than a poke in the eye with a pointy stick any day...