Hi,

My mom recently bought an HDR-HC1E camcorder and we're having some trouble connecting it to the a PC. We have 2 relatively new PCs at home, both equipped with FireWire ports. I plug the FW cable to the PC and then to the Camcoredr when both are off. Then I switch the PC on and once Windows XP (SP2) finishes loading i switch the Camcorder on. Neither one of the PCs detect any new hardware, and when i got to "Scanners and Cameras" in the Control panel i don't see any devices apart from the USB webcams. I tried switching to the camcorder to all 3 different modes but doesn't seem to make any difference.

Thing is, my mom took the camcorder to a friend and when they plugged it to her PC, Windows detected it straight away and they were able to use the camcorder with various video editing software.

As far as i can tell the FW on both our PC is installed correctly as when i check the "IEEE 1394 bus host controllers" in the Device Manager i get a "Via compliant IEEE 1394 host controller" and when i click that, it shows "Device is working properly".

I am really lost here and would appreciate any help that can be provided. Thanks!

At your mom's friends house, did they use your firewire cable or hers?

I'm just wondering if that may be the problem.

the used her friend's cable, so she brought the cable home and we tried using it, but again it made no difference.

I'm stuck for useful suggestions. If it were just one PC that wasn't recognising it then I'd be suggesting removing and reinstalling the card (if one is present), updating card and m/board drivers etc.

But both PC's not recognising it - that's weird. I'm assuming the firewire ports are integral to the mainboard, and not expansion cards. It may just be worth checking the support/driver pages for the mainboard manufacturer - you may even be able to email technical support.

Do you have any other firewire devices to test the ports with (some external disk drive caddys utilise firewire instead of/in addition to USB)?

Failing that, you could try adding a separate firewire card to one of the PC's. They are cheap enough to take a risk with if all else fails.

Sorry I couldn't help further. Good luck.