Yeah I called an IT helpline and they said to look at Device Manager, but yes the IEEE connection is there and appears and disappears accordingly when I insert and remove the Firewire card.

I went to PC World and they tried another cable - nothing happened.

Yeah the man from the IT Helpline said to try downloading the trial version of Adobe Premier and seeing if that picks it up, but it didn't.

I tried calling the Canon helpline and they couldn't help me either. I really am at my wit's end. What I'm going to to do is go back to PC World to test everything - ie, try my camcorder on another laptop with Windows Vista, and try my laptop with another Firewire device. It's difficult to test on your own when you don't have the equipment.

Thanks for trying to help, I'll let you know what happens.